7.1 > 8.0? Seems like an update for Tesla's legal team, and a net loss for customers.

[ccutrer]

Does anyone know the exact nag algorithm for the latest 7.1? I don't feel like electrek's description of it for 8.0 is much different, but I don't drive with a stopwatch seeing how often the car nags me. I was under the impression the biggest change is if you ignore the nag, AP semi-permanently disables itself. Which I'm totally fine with, because I never ignore the nags. I almost always get nagged, even though my hands are always touching the wheel (I don't say "on". I rest them on my knees, and have 2-3 fingers from each hand touching the wheel at about 5 and 7 o' clock. I'm always feeling the wheel and can instantly tighten the grip to counteract any bad maneuvers, but the car doesn't usually detect my presence when it's behaving).

 

[alfagiulia]

In places and times where I can actually drive, I agree.

However, when I'm rolling down a completely empty, completely straight interstate or trapped in 5 mph stop and go by a thousand other cars, I get no pleasure from driving along, so those times I'm happy to let the car drive itself and very glad to have that option, which makes the stop and go much less irritating.

(the aforementioned empty interstate can be interesting for scenery, but I can see that better if the car is driving, too.)

Some people prefer to be the passenger... check their phones, stare at the scenery, doze off. Other people, like me, prefer to be the driver.... even in traffic or a lonely interstate. I think the Bolt and many excellent future offerings with driver assists will be perfect for the first kind of person. But for the second type, we're counting on Tesla continuing to do what no other car maker has ever done.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I don't understand your concern. You are still getting Autopilot, but now you have to actually hold the wheel when the car tells you. Are you saying that you are upset that Tesla's software is making you MORE safe and enforcing the driver responsibilities under Autopilot?

protection against leaving your child / daughter in a hot car (sorry, but meh.)

I believe every parent out there would probably disagree with you.

 

[RDoc]

I simply don't understand this desire to not hold the wheel. I grip the wheel comfortably at the bottom next to the spoke and NEVER get a nag.

IMHO if you don't want to hold the wheel, don't drive, use a designated driver. It's not that different from drinking and driving. If you're not in control of the car you are endangering others and shouldn't be driving.

 

[sorka]

The improvements look pretty major to me, in multiple areas, and no "loss" of any capabilities that I can see. If you want to complain about a company that continually improves its vehicles even years after they were sold, at no cost to its customers, that's your choice but I think your attitude is counterproductive and pointless.

Really, then can you explain to me how I can jump to artist or album(I have thousands of them) without scrolling through the list? Apparently you can no longer press a letter to jump through the list.

 

[u00mem9]

The improvements look pretty major to me, in multiple areas, and no "loss" of any capabilities that I can see. If you want to complain about a company that continually improves its vehicles even years after they were sold, at no cost to its customers, that's your choice but I think your attitude is counterproductive and pointless.

I guess it's "no loss of any capabilities" to you, since you don't actually have Autopilot.

 

[Pruitt]

The hot car mitigation thing is a really big deal. Dead kids and pets really don't merit a "meh".

Kids and pets aside, it will also help protect all the soft (and the hard plastic) surfaces of the interior by limiting their maximum temperature. This will reduce the "boil off" of volatiles and extend the life of those parts.

 

[sorka]

The problem with 7.1 is not that people were taking their hands OFF the wheel. it's that they were taking their eyes OFF the road. The Hogwarts fan would have still crashed even if he had one hand on the wheel because he would have still not been watching the road.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

Are you serious? See Software 8.0 is Here . The many improvements are listed on that page.

If you do not consider the information described on that page as "improvements", then you and I are living in different realities.

Read it. Nothing on UI improvements in terms of speed and responsiveness. What I take from the release note is this was more like improvements on placements and how information is displayed on the screen.

 

[Saghost]

I simply don't understand this desire to not hold the wheel. I grip the wheel comfortably at the bottom next to the spoke and NEVER get a nag.

IMHO if you don't want to hold the wheel, don't drive, use a designated driver. It's not that different from drinking and driving. If you're not in control of the car you are endangering others and shouldn't be driving.

One of the important operational parts of a system like Autopilot is knowing when the car is in control and when you are. (This is actually one of the biggest failings of some competing systems.)

One way of helping this become instinctive is to use different positions and grips in Autopilot and when you're driving. Not gripping the wheel firmly also lets the car drive more smoothly.

So I've been deliberately cultivating a different grip in AP - kinda similar to the the one mentioned above, with several fingers on the wheel near the bottom.

 

[sorka]

I don't understand your concern. You are still getting Autopilot, but now you have to actually hold the wheel when the car tells you..

If I'm going to hold the wheel myself, I'm going to drive myself. That doesn't mean I ever take my eyes off the road any more than I did before we even had the feature.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

If we really want to be honest with it this update is the crash reduction update.

The vast majority of the changes have to do with addressing the things that lead to various crashes.

Human inattention was addressed - Perhaps not in an ideal way through nagging, but Tesla was under the gun of the media and under regulatory scrutiny.

Human interaction with autopilot was addressed - They changed the behavior of UI to improve notifications. This was believed to play a major role in the Montana crash.

AEB was significantly improved because it's the most critical component because it can activate whether AP is on or off.

The bottom line is people were crashing too much, and Tesla reduced the likelihood of people crashing. I'm perfectly okay with someone not liking the update, but you can't possibly suggest it's only for Tesla. Do you not care at all about how much you pay for insurance? Do you not care at all when your fellow Tesla driver gets into an accident? Do you not care at all when someone else drives your car if they crash it?

The bottom line is we proved ourselves as collective to be horrible drivers with stupid excuses like "I thought it was going to stop for me". On a normal car we could blame the driver, but this isn't a normal car. This car is front and center of the move to remove humans from driving.

 

[ifonul]

I too find this release 'meh', CYA sort of release. A lot of wasted engineering effort in improving media - no use for that, I have my iPhone, thanks!, USB? - make my iPhone wired connection work!, nav - same, you can't keep up with Apple/Android/Waze on that, so why even bother? AC on for a year? Really? 60sec nags, really? After all the hype?

I find it amazing that this forum is finding so many excuses for simply misdirected, wasted effort. I know this is better than most cars, but that is not an excuse for investing time and energy in the wrong directions. I will update anyway, but don't ask me to be excited!

I'm really curious to see what 'enhanced braking' means and 'improved stop and go traffic' - does this mean the 1 setting for TACC gap will now be the equivalent of the old 2? Bay Area traffic needs a 0.5 setting instead!

 

[omarsultan]

They had a liability problem.

No, they had an owners-with-poor-judgement problem, which v8 seems to begin to remedy. Based on the release notes, I am still not seeing the massive "loss of functionality" that you are going on about. If you mean they are making it harder for you to use AP irresponsibly, then, yeah, I am OK with that.

BTW I would rather Tesla attempt to remedy it than the government attempt to remedy it.

 

[X Yes?]

I'm considering sticking with 7.1 until the dust settles on 8.0. As far as I can see, most of the updates are to reduce Tesla's liability. The new nag function is detailed on Electrek.co:

"Here’s a comprehensive breakdown:

• Below 45 mph
  • ‘Hold Steering Wheel’ alert after 5 minutes on a straight road.
  • If there are curves on the road, the system accounts for lateral acceleration so refer to over 45 mph.
• Over 45 mph
  • ‘Hold Steering Wheel’ alert after 1 minute if no vehicle to follow.
  • ‘Hold Steering Wheel’ alert after 3 minutes if you are tracking a car in front

If you ignore 3 alerts within an hour, the Autosteer feature will be disabled for the remainder of the drive – meaning you will have to put the car on park before being able to enable it again."



The "improvements" I see mostly relate to safety / liability concerns at a cost to daily use:
- protection against leaving your child / daughter in a hot car (sorry, but meh.)
- improved use of radar to identify stationary objects (but no improvement to camera recognition of lane marker, the primary weakness)
- basically requiring the hands on the wheel (reminder every 60 sec? really? functionally WAY below what I have now)
-minor UI and media player updates (wasted time that could have been spent on CarPlay implementation)

If I had a car on order right now, that is going to have 8.0 when it arrives, I would be a little upset (a lot?) that it's going to offer much less convenience than the vehicle I test drove before ordering.

Thought? Anyone else hanging onto 7.1 for now.

I agree partially with your thread title. It does look like a step in the right direction for Tesla's legal team.
It also appears to be a win for all other drivers on the road, including Tesla drivers that value their own safety. It's going to be tougher to sleep and drive.

 

[Stoneymonster]

Some people prefer to be the passenger... check their phones, stare at the scenery, doze off. Other people, like me, prefer to be the driver.... even in traffic or a lonely interstate. I think the Bolt and many excellent future offerings with driver assists will be perfect for the first kind of person. But for the second type, we're counting on Tesla continuing to do what no other car maker has ever done.

I want a car that can do both.

 

[gavin.belson]

In fact, I usually rest my hand on the bottom of the wheel. This is often not detected by the car, since I am not providing any reaction torque. If I do hold on rigidly to the wheel, the system actually does a worse job of smoothly steering. There is added overshoot, because (of course) there is now an additional and less predictable torque generator in the system (me). It works, but not as well, as has been discussed in a number of other threads.

I have this exact same experience. I have always assumed that it's like this for everyone, but from some of the other posts in this thread, maybe I'm wrong. Do others find that simply resting their hands comfortably on the bottom of the wheel is sufficient to avoid the "Hold Steering Wheel" prompt or to dismiss it when it appears?

For me, even though I'm always holding the wheel, I still get the prompt on every curve, and I have to "jiggle" the wheel to make it go away.

 

[ifonul]

BTW, this is the typical response of American companies to adversities - someone sued us, because some random guy did a stupid thing for which he deserves a Darwin award, let's dumb it down, constrain it for everyone else! Any of you thinks the shoe removal at the airports in US is an useful thing to do? I didn't think so...

 

[jeffro01]

Personally, I don't really care at all about any changes to the nags... The way I keep my hand(s) on the wheel has always been sufficient to never cause a nag in the first place...

My two main issues right now are as follows.

1. Still no Apple CarPlay support... REALLY???... Okay maybe I'm not *that* upset about the lack of carplay but...
2. It still doesn't look like you can add multiple waypoints to the nav, nor does it look like you can remotely send it directions from either your phone or computer (yes I know the calendar trick work around)

I'm excited for the new AP enhancements, but haven't really seen anything else that makes me go *wow*...

Am I missing something?

Jeff

 

[MrAustraliaTax]

You are still getting Autopilot, but now you have to actually hold the wheel when the car tells you.

The problem with timed nags is that they create a reflex response of tugging the wheel inattentively every 5 minutes (7.1) or 1 minute (8.0) on the presumption that AP is doing just fine and just needs to know you are there.

With 7.0 you were nagged ONLY when the system wasn't sure what to do next and you NEEDED to help it.

i.e. ALL the 7.0 alerts *required* responses, but for 7.1 and MORE SO for 8.0, virtually all the responses are false positive alerts. 8.0 is going to make the "tug and forget" response even more ingrained than it already is for 7.1. Instead of fixing the problem, it will become worse.