After 6 months of loving my car, version 8 makes me want to sell it

[dhjdhj]

My car has punished me! When I use auto-steer, I pay attention to the road, not to the dashboard. So when I missed one of the (now far too frequent) prompts to hold the wheel, I was "not allowed" to use auto-steer for the remainder of the journey. Good job I was just 5 minutes from home, not on the interstate on a trip. Major fail!

And don't get me started on the horrible new media interface. I have 700 artists and about 6000 songs. There's no A-Z shortcut (that I could find anyway) to get you to a particular artist (or song) and if if you press one of the artists by mistake and then have to go "back", you end up at "A" again. The scrolling speed is so painfully slow that this is a major PITA. And why doesn't the SEARCH mechanism let you search your USB stick? You've got the complete list of artists and song names available.

Tesla, what the heck were you thinking? I've gone from telling everyone to buy one to "stay the heck away from it for now"

 

[jeffro01]

So again, you weren't holding the wheel, correct? Then what exactly is your problem??? I have yet to see a single nag on 8.0 and can't remember the last one I had on 7.1 unless I was deliberately trying to generate one....

No argument on the media player side for users like you who have large libraries, certainly was a step back there...

Oh and really??? "stay the heck away from it for now"??? That's pretty dramatic...

Jeff

 

[ecarfan]

I saw your thread title and literally laughed out loud. Thanks for the chuckle.

 

[Forty Creek]

First post after 6 months of driving your new Tesla? Very restrained I would say. Well done.

 

[dhjdhj]

Correct --- since auto-steer became available (actually, now that I think about it, it's almost a year, I got it last November) it has worked beautifully for the most part (modulo occasional updates where it seemed a bit unstable). When I drive on highways, I have my hands either on the wheel or on my lap, about 250ms (if that) to reach the wheel in the event of a real problem, the potential of which I can see long in advance since my eyes are always on the road (front and back via mirror) and address.

So again, you weren't holding the wheel, correct?

I'm not the quiet type -- I'm blunt and to the point. The S has been a great car, the auto-steer has been a wonderful feature but the way it works right now sucks, obviously in my opinion. Am I supposed to stay quiet when I don't like something? I don't need my car to control what I can do and essentially punish me if I don't. I'm quite capable of being responsible for my own actions. Just because some schmuck wasn't paying attention to the road and traffic, we all have to be penalized? I understand totally both the capabilities and the potential failure points of auto-steer. By the way, autosteer on the most recent 7.x update worked far better. On version 8, my car has on several occasions just driven right over the middle white line (well, tried to, obviously I took control!) on roads where it previously worked flawlessly.

stay the heck away from it for now"??? That's pretty dramatic...

 

[dhjdhj]

First post after 6 months of driving your new Tesla? Very restrained I would say. Well done.

Up until now, in spite of the minor bugs that have unfortunately prevented my wife from being comfortable driving it, it has been a terrific experience. It still is, if you ignore both auto-steer and media system. Unfortunately, both of these were important reasons for choosing the Tesla.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Are you holding the steering wheel?

I haven't had any more nags to hold the steering wheel with version 8.0 than 7.1, and I hold the steering wheel fairly lightly.

The bugs with the media center are pretty atrocious. Hopefully we'll see some fixes soon.

It was most certainly rushed to get people to stop crashing.

 

[dhjdhj]

I haven't had any more nags with version 8 than version 7. That's not the issue --- in version 7, if I didn't respond quick enough to the "hold steering wheel", the car would beep (and music would stop etc), reminding me to twist the wheel a bit to prove I'm holding it (sigh). But the new version doesn't beep, it just flashes the dashboard and then (as I found out today) stops letting you use auto-steer. So if you're watching the road, you can get screwed. The beep was an absolutely fine solution.

I would also add that there is hardly much point to an auto-steer solution that requires you to apply circular pressure to the wheel. In most cases, since the steering is doing what it's supposed to, any pressure you put on it is basically an attempt to change what it's already doing properly.

Look, I get the concern around people who are not watching the road, etc. But I am watching the road. I'm basically getting punished for not watching the dashboard.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

It doesn't require you to apply circular pressure.

All it requires is for you to hold it, and it detects this because IT applies circular pressure. It's constantly doing tiny amounts of steering and it can detect you holding the steering wheel doing it.

It's not a terribly good implementation, and it is prone to not detecting the hand. For me it happens once every hundred miles or so. Nothing for me to get worked up about. But, I can see how it would happen more with someone holding it differently or not holding it.

 

[dhjdhj]

It doesn't detect it with me because when I have in fact held the wheel continuously, I'm just allowing it to move the way it wants, and I still get nagged.
In any case, what I've stated above is simply my own experience of the last few days, which is that the way it worked before version 8 was better than the way it works now (and on top of that, auto-steer doesn't do as good a job as it did)

 

[dhjdhj]

I saw your thread title and literally laughed out loud. Thanks for the chuckle.

Glad to lighten your day!

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

In my experience so far the TACC element is much better.
The Lane-Steering is no better, but no worse.
The Nag isn't much different.

My biggest hate is the map change (making it larger and biasing to the top), and the bugs in the media.

I'm hugely biased towards TACC so I love 8.0 so far.

The biggest design oops in the entire car is still the seatbelt. It's hard for anything to match the level of dumb dumb with the decision not to make it height adjustable.

The bugs in the media will be fixed, but the whole nag thing we'll just have to learn to deal with.

 

[dhjdhj]

Or, if enough people feel strongly about this issue (one of the reasons I posted my opinion) maybe Tesla will address the concern.
---------
The bugs in the media will be fixed, but the whole nag thing we'll just have to learn to deal with.

 

[dhjdhj]

By the way, regarding the media stuff, it's clear that most people, if not everyone, really thinks V8 is a step backwards. How could Tesla not have known this? Don't they have decent QA?

 

[Stoneymonster]

Ok.

 

[number12]

I haven't had any more nags with version 8 than version 7. That's not the issue --- in version 7, if I didn't respond quick enough to the "hold steering wheel", the car would beep (and music would stop etc), reminding me to twist the wheel a bit to prove I'm holding it (sigh). But the new version doesn't beep, it just flashes the dashboard and then (as I found out today) stops letting you use auto-steer. So if you're watching the road, you can get screwed. The beep was an absolutely fine solution.

I would also add that there is hardly much point to an auto-steer solution that requires you to apply circular pressure to the wheel. In most cases, since the steering is doing what it's supposed to, any pressure you put on it is basically an attempt to change what it's already doing properly.

Look, I get the concern around people who are not watching the road, etc. But I am watching the road. I'm basically getting punished for not watching the dashboard.

As someone still on 7.1 is there nothing better about 8.0. As in you would not download if you had to do it again?

 

[Stoneymonster]

Why is this its own thread, we have several for just these sorts of topics. Everyone's personal story does not merit a thread.

 

[dhjdhj]

Is that a rhetorical question? Obviously it's because I created it on a new thread, with precisely the goal of having it not be buried somewhere. Hey look, Mom, it worked.

 

[dhjdhj]

As someone still on 7.1 is there nothing better about 8.0. As in you would not download if you had to do it again?

I would go back to 7 in an instant if I could. I haven't found anything about 8 that is a significant improvement from my perspective. And independent of my personal opinion, auto-steer doesn't work as reliably as the most recent 7x version.

 

[Saghost]

I haven't had any more nags with version 8 than version 7. That's not the issue --- in version 7, if I didn't respond quick enough to the "hold steering wheel", the car would beep (and music would stop etc), reminding me to twist the wheel a bit to prove I'm holding it (sigh). But the new version doesn't beep, it just flashes the dashboard and then (as I found out today) stops letting you use auto-steer. So if you're watching the road, you can get screwed. The beep was an absolutely fine solution.

The videos I've seen show several sequences of beeps after all the flashing before it disables Autopilot. You have to ignore it for something like 10 seconds after it starts beeping before it disables...