7.1 AutoPilot Nag

[Electroman]

My experience has been quite different. In my daily 50+ minutes of commute each way it might nag say 6 or 7 times, but it seems to be around curves and other hotspots.

And today in my first long distance trip from North of Dallas to Austin (420 miles round trip) of which I drove over 350 miles in AP mode, the nag was mostly around curves and crests, and in straight stretches once in maybe 10 minutes. I didn't time it, but just a guess. Also noticed that in slow stop and go traffic it goes without nagging for a long time sometimes as much as 15 minutes.

All in all it was very unobtrusive and I really welcomed the nag as a reminder for me that I am still in control and have the full responsibility.

 

[garygid]

It is not the lawyers who "ruined" the AP experience. It is those who openly advertised
using AP without keeping their hands on the steering wheel, as Tesla has clearly requested.

Tesla's Beta AP software is apparently not yet ready for completely hands-off use.

 

[AWDtsla]

It is not the lawyers who "ruined" the AP experience. It is those who openly advertised
using AP without keeping their hands on the steering wheel, as Tesla has clearly requested.

Oh, like Elon Musk?

 

[bhzmark]

Just rest a hand on the wheel for the busy highways and worse, and expect the no nag to be available only on those highways that are relatively desolate and straight. Why is that so hard?

 

[green1]

It is not the lawyers who "ruined" the AP experience. It is those who openly advertised
using AP without keeping their hands on the steering wheel, as Tesla has clearly requested.

Tesla's Beta AP software is apparently not yet ready for completely hands-off use.

Tesla's lawyers didn't have to respond to that, they could have chosen to fight any obviously frivolous lawsuits in court and set a precedent instead of forcing crippled software. They chose "easy" instead of "right"

 

[garygid]

Perhaps Tesla thinks that the Beta AP is not ready for hands-off driving.
But, some users think that it SHOULD be ready, so they insist upon driving hands-off.

Tesla responds ... we asked you nicely, but apparently we have to nag you more.
Some drivers complain more, thinking that they know better than Tesla what bugs
might be lurking in the Beta AP software.

Does Tesla need to disable AP for an hour in any car driven hands-off with this Beta AP?

 

[Cyberax]

Does Tesla need to disable AP for an hour in any car driven hands-off with this Beta AP?

I HATE people who repeat the nonsense that AP somehow detects hands on wheel.

It does NOT. It detects torque, and it does not detect it if you only lightly touch the wheel. Which is completely normal for me - I pay attention to the road all the time, and I'm ready to take over immediate, and I freaking HAVE hands on the wheel. Yet I still get a nag.

Thankfully, I'm moving back to a good old 7.0 tomorrow once I trade my car back to my friend who needed a 4WD for a while.

 

[scottf200]

Does Tesla need to disable AP for an hour in any car driven hands-off with this Beta AP?

I HATE people who repeat the nonsense that AP somehow detects hands on wheel.
It does NOT. It detects torque, and it does not detect it if you only lightly touch the wheel. Which is completely normal for me - I pay attention to the road all the time, and I'm ready to take over immediate, and I freaking HAVE hands on the wheel. Yet I still get a nag.
Thankfully, I'm moving back to a good old 7.0 tomorrow once I trade my car back to my friend who needed a 4WD for a while.

"HATE people" ... perhaps you are reading too little into what they are saying. Certainly the active people with AP vehicles understand it is torque and are using "hands on" in the general sense like the very clear warning text the car displays.

I certainly can appreciate that you are, in fact, driving with your hand on the wheel and paying attention. Bravo ... honestly. Curiously you have not made the minor adjustment to apply even a little torque in your hands on. Looking forward to this experience in the next week or so.

 

[cgiGuy]

Thankfully, I'm moving back to a good old 7.0 tomorrow once I trade my car back to my friend who needed a 4WD for a while.

Enjoy taking each exit on AP again... at least you won't have to torque the wheel at all... oh wait...

 

[slevit1md]

Driving on 23 into Michigan, was getting frequent timed nags on sections of perfectly straight road, and realized I had a small trail cam card reader sitting on the floor. Needless to say, it's possible to use the autopilot without being constantly nagged, and it works very well. I still watch the road constantly as I've always done with auto pilot engaged and am ready to take over if necessary, but on the highway with good lane markings, the tesla has done an outstanding job navigating with no assistance from me.

When used as intended, it rarely needs driver input. Even before the timed nag, it always wanted me to hold the wheel for even pretty gradual curves in the highway. I never saw how just touching the wheel for a second helped it navigate any better and now I see that it can handle curves all by itself, without issue. That was likely a lawyer requirement and the timed nag almost certainly is. Still hoping that sometime soon, they remove the timed nag. But until that time, there are solutions to use the feature as it was intended.

 

[wk057]

It's not going to take much for Tesla to compensate for a static load like that on the wheel... :-\

 

[tel]

Come on, guys. Think this through. The post by slevit1md is exactly the kind of thing that caused Tesla to implement the nag in the first place. People are openly posting ways to "beat the system" and Tesla is responding accordingly. If you don't want further restrictions, keep these kinds hacks off the open forum.

As an alternative, you could always use AP with hands on the wheel, as Tesla suggests...

 

[slevit1md]

Come on, guys. Think this through. The post by slevit1md is exactly the kind of thing that caused Tesla to implement the nag in the first place. People are openly posting ways to "beat the system" and Tesla is responding accordingly. If you don't want further restrictions, keep these kinds hacks off the open forum.

As an alternative, you could always use AP with hands on the wheel, as Tesla suggests...

Fair enough. I'll take down that post. However, hands on the wheel is not how the feature was ever intended, as Elon said himself; It's how the lawyers intended. And I don't intend to keep them there either. I know I'm not the only person who is disappointed with the way the nag has been implemented. I'm using the system how it was advertised to be used and on the roads where it was supposed to be used.

 

[slevit1md]

It's not going to take much for Tesla to compensate for a static load like that on the wheel... :-\

No doubt they could, but do they care enough to? They could probably do something to prevent you from rooting your vehicle (at least temporarily), but will they? No big secret that people attach things to the wheel on Mercedes vehicles, but they don't seem to have done anything about that. Sad that we have to resort to similar tactics. Tesla was supposed to be better. In many ways they are, but it's pretty infuriating when they downgrade previously released features. It's great when tesla sends out upgrades, which no other car can do, but other cars will also always have any features that the car came with!

 

[tel]

Fair enough. I'll take down that post. However, hands on the wheel is not how the feature was ever intended, as Elon said himself; It's how the lawyers intended. And I don't intend to keep them there either. I know I'm not the only person who is disappointed with the way the nag has been implemented. I'm using the system how it was advertised to be used and on the roads where it was supposed to be used.

I agree in principle. However, the software is still presented as beta, and my optimistic suspicion is that hands-free driving will eventually come when the software matures. We're just not there yet.

 

[Cyberax]

Enjoy taking each exit on AP again... at least you won't have to torque the wheel at all... oh wait...

That's actually OK with me. Diving for exits behavior is completely predictable and I can either avoid it by driving in the left lane or just take over before the exit.

Constant nags are ANNOYING. I'm usually listening to audiobooks and audio nags are extremely disruptive for that.

- - - Updated - - -

I certainly can appreciate that you are, in fact, driving with your hand on the wheel and paying attention. Bravo ... honestly. Curiously you have not made the minor adjustment to apply even a little torque in your hands on. Looking forward to this experience in the next week or so.

Yes, I ended up constantly tweaking the wheel just to avoid annoying audio nags.

 

[green1]

I agree in principle. However, the software is still presented as beta, and my optimistic suspicion is that hands-free driving will eventually come when the software matures. We're just not there yet.

I think you are incredibly optimistic on this one. I don't expect the software to ever leave beta on this generation of hardware.
They promised hands free driving at the reveal, but they also promised all sorts of other things that haven't happened, so I suspect they were lying about this one too.

- - - Updated - - -

Enjoy taking each exit on AP again... at least you won't have to torque the wheel at all... oh wait...

I'm still on 7.0, it rarely dives for an exit, I have one common route that I can drive over an hour straight without applying any torque at all to the wheel, and without a single nag. No current plans to lose that ability.

 

[slevit1md]

I agree in principle. However, the software is still presented as beta, and my optimistic suspicion is that hands-free driving will eventually come when the software matures. We're just not there yet.

Trip planning is also beta, and has been for some time. Still pretty bad. I don't know that beta means much to tesla. The autopilot was delivered very late as it was, and then only as beta. I don't think it's unreasonable that we should now expect the basic functionality that Elon advertised over a year ago. And they delivered it (eventually), but took it away. I don't think they took it away because it wasn't ready. As some people have seen, the system actually works very well in the situations it was intended to work in (on the highway with clear markings). They took it away because lawyers told them to. Downgraded it to be more similar to what's already out there.

Some of the videos people posted were pretty bad, doing things that autopilot was clearly never designed to do. I don't think that's the same as a pic that shows enabling autopilot to function the way it was designed to function, and did function prior to a software downgrade.

 

[Nismode]

Trip planning is also beta, and has been for some time. Still pretty bad. I don't know that beta means much to tesla. The autopilot was delivered very late as it was, and then only as beta. I don't think it's unreasonable that we should now expect the basic functionality that Elon advertised over a year ago. And they delivered it (eventually), but took it away. I don't think they took it away because it wasn't ready. As some people have seen, the system actually works very well in the situations it was intended to work in (on the highway with clear markings). They took it away because lawyers told them to. Downgraded it to be more similar to what's already out there.

Some of the videos people posted were pretty bad, doing things that autopilot was clearly never designed to do. I don't think that's the same as a pic that shows enabling autopilot to function the way it was designed to function, and did function prior to a software downgrade.

People speak of a downgrade when it works just as it was presented, just with a reminder for safety reasons, and yet people throw up their arms in despair about it.

They didn't take anything away, and they did nothing of the sort because lawyers told them to. They did it for the reason you stated two lines below, because of people using it to do things it wasn't designed to do in the current iteration. So blame those idiots, not Tesla, and certainly not these lawyers you speak of.

I think Garygid summed it up best.

The hands-on-wheel requirement is not to detect if the driver is alive or awake,
so touching other controls should not inhibit the autosteering nag. Instead,
detecting what appears to be hands on the steering wheel inhibits the nag.

Only with your hands actually on the wheel can you detect an inappropriate
steering effort and override it BEFORE the car jogs enough to hit a nearby object.
The Beta Auto-Steering software is not yet ready for autonomous (hands off)
driving, so Tesla is telling us, in many ways, to keep our hands on the wheel.

 

[green1]

People speak of a downgrade when it works just as it was presented, just with a reminder for safety reasons, and yet people throw up their arms in despair about it.

You realize they presented it as 100% hands free driving from onramp to offramp right? In fact I seem to remember Elon specifically stating that needing to place your hands on the wheel at all would completely defeat the purpose.
You realize they presented it as being able to navigate to your front door by itself on private property to pick you up right?
You realize they presented it as being able to automatically adjust to speed limits without user input right?

Which of those is "just as it was presented" in the current release?