AP 2.0 exceeds AP 1.0 for me again - activates on 2 lane road where 1.0 never would

[calisnow]

So I noticed this today - AP 2.0 let me activate it on a barely marked two lane road (I'll take pics later) in suburban/almost rural central Wisconsin where AP 1.0 never would. Not sure if AP 2.0 has been willing to do this for some time but I just noticed it today.

It also negotiated a quite severe left hand curve on this same barely marked two lane road that I thought would make it fly off the road. I tested it very early in the am with no other cars around and I was ready to grab the wheel in case we weren't going to make it. Quite the pucker factor but it swerved away from the dirt at the last moment and kept me on the tarmac.

This now marks the third situation where 2.0 has exceeded 1.0's performance for me personally:

1 - 2.0 successfully handles merging/narrowing freeway lanes, whereas 1.0 would sometimes drift outside the clearly marked outside lane markers into the shoulder.
2 - 2.0 has successfully negotiated a construction zone with poorly painted, confusing lines between Madison and Stevens Point where 1.0 gave me the "take over" warning.
3 - 2.0 now negotiates an almost rural, barely marked two lane road where 1.0 would not activate.

2.0 is still, to be fair, not as smooth in its driving experience as 1.0.

 

[mitchellh3]

I never owned an AP1 car so I'm not sure, but I've heard multiple AP1 owners say a big difference for AP2 is its ability to be activated on unmarked roads. I've tried it myself and like you said its pretty "pucker factor" but it does work... by some definition.

 

[thegruf]

you're just trying to get me to trade my AP1.0

posts like this are just going to ever increasingly wound us legacy owners

 

[calisnow]

you're just trying to get me to trade my AP1.0

posts like this are just going to ever increasingly wound us legacy owners

Well if it makes you feel better the driving experience is still rougher than 1.0 in all ways.

 

[chillaban]

Yeah there are some circumstances, especially around hilly roads, poor lane line / road boundary detection and when trucks/cars are running over lane lines or casting shadows on them, where AP2 vision is finding better lane lines than AP1.

It looks like Tesla is developing AP2 from scratch, as opposed to copying/cloning any MobilEye preconceived notions of doing things.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Yes, AP1 is notoriously bad at navigating single lane curvy roads. AP1 is truly only a freeway AP system, with one major exception: think bumper to bumper stop and go traffic, and there is a lane that is merging into your lane. AP1 cannot see the car who is merging into your lane soon enough. Does AP2 handle this now?

 

[chillaban]

Yes, AP1 is notoriously bad at navigating single lane curvy roads. AP1 is truly only a freeway AP system, with one major exception: think bumper to bumper stop and go traffic, and there is a lane that is merging into your lane. AP1 cannot see the car who is merging into your lane soon enough. Does AP2 handle this now?

Not super well currently. AP2 is not very good at peripheral vision yet.

Note that we are being very glass-half-full about AP2 right now. As the OP said, in basically all driving conditions, AP2 is currently less confidence inspiring than AP1. But we are seeing isolated circumstances where AP2 shows promise of one day being better than AP1.

 

[xyeahtony]

The general consensus is that AP2 is not as good as AP1 (yet). But obviously this will change in the very near future, its inevitable. There are just more cameras so the car is capable of doing so much more. I bought this car as sort of an investment, knowing it would improve in the future. I'm not going to throw a hissy fit because i can't sleep in my car today while it drives. The only way AP2 does not advance is if Tesla for some reason flops as a company and bankrupts next year and thus ending all development.

 

[croman]

Ap2 has always worked well on unmarked roads after local AS release. Maybe better somehow without lane lines. It's gotten a touch worse on 17.11.3 in that it takes longer to offer AS whereas prior it'd give AS after a half second now it takes 2 seconds before it locks in. I believe it uses the curb and the asphalt fold in the center of the road in my case.

Road is totally unmarked in middle and all over edges. Car will stay centered and avoid oncoming cars. It didn't know the speed so it defaults to 35. Been using it for months. It's nice but there are so many other problems and shortcomings that this isn't really that big of a deal (for me)

 

[calisnow]

... bumper to bumper stop and go traffic, and there is a lane that is merging into your lane. AP1 cannot see the car who is merging into your lane soon enough. Does AP2 handle this now?

Not any better than AP1 did as far as I can tell.

 

[bonnie]

@calisnow I was going to start a new thread, but this one fits (if you don't mind me jumping in...). I did a quick roundtrip up to Seattle yesterday (230 miles each way, give or take). The drive home was late at night, heavy rain/fog, puddled water in places on the freeway, and lots of semis out there.

Not the best of conditions. Iirc, AP1 tends not to work so well in inclement weather (has that changed?). I can attest to the fact that the entire drive, AP2 was never 'unavailable' - it was correctly identifying lanes -- and as I told a friend earlier today, there were times I realized that AP2 was seeing the road ahead better than I was. I can't see through fog ... but it clearly could. (And for the record, I kept the speed at what was safe were I doing the driving. And had my eyes glued to the road/hands on wheel. It was dicey out there.)

 

[Cosmacelf]

The general consensus is that AP2 is not as good as AP1 (yet). But obviously this will change in the very near future, its inevitable. There are just more cameras so the car is capable of doing so much more. I bought this car as sort of an investment, knowing it would improve in the future. I'm not going to throw a hissy fit because i can't sleep in my car today while it drives. The only way AP2 does not advance is if Tesla for some reason flops as a company and bankrupts next year and thus ending all development.

In today's quarterly conference call, Elon finally kinda admitted that he doesn't know for sure if the current AP2 CPU board has enough horsepower to do full level 5 autonomy, but, he said that it's OK since the CPU board can be swapped out.

 

[bonnie]

In today's quarterly conference call, Elon finally kinda admitted that he doesn't know for sure if the current AP2 CPU board has enough horsepower to do full level 5 autonomy, but, he said that it's OK since the CPU board can be swapped out.

Yeah, the board is in a fairly accessible place - I really wanted the AP2 hardware on my X, including the wiring harness. The board I'm not too concerned about.

 

[chillaban]

In today's quarterly conference call, Elon finally kinda admitted that he doesn't know for sure if the current AP2 CPU board has enough horsepower to do full level 5 autonomy, but, he said that it's OK since the CPU board can be swapped out.

That I'm not concerned about at all. In fact if swapping out the computer and adding more computational power helps FSD arrive sooner, I'd be first in line to get the upgrade.

I'm more worried about the possibility of the camera being in the wrong places, or needing more sensors, etc etc.

 

[calisnow]

@calisnow I was going to start a new thread, but this one fits (if you don't mind me jumping in...). I did a quick roundtrip up to Seattle yesterday (230 miles each way, give or take). The drive home was late at night, heavy rain/fog, puddled water in places on the freeway, and lots of semis out there.

Not the best of conditions. Iirc, AP1 tends not to work so well in inclement weather (has that changed?). I can attest to the fact that the entire drive, AP2 was never 'unavailable' - it was correctly identifying lanes -- and as I told a friend earlier today, there were times I realized that AP2 was seeing the road ahead better than I was. I can't see through fog ... but it clearly could. (And for the record, I kept the speed at what was safe were I doing the driving. And had my eyes glued to the road/hands on wheel. It was dicey out there.)

Glad to hear it did well. I don't have the best memory of AP1 in heavy rain or fog. I haven't driven AP2 in fog that I can remember but that's great to hear it's working well for you in those conditions. I have driven AP2 in heavy rain recently and felt it did well - and like you that it seemed to see better than I can on slick roads at night with a lot of glare obscuring the lane lines to my eyes.

 

[thegruf]

@calisnow...Not the best of conditions. Iirc, AP1 tends not to work so well in inclement weather (has that changed?)...

to be fair I think it has improved quite a bit. On a few occasions recently I have been very impressed at how well it has coped. Of course this could well be mostly radar functionality which both versions share. Of course I don't have AP2.0 to compare .. but great nonetheless that you had such a good experience with AP2.0

 

[J1mbo]

Quite impressed with the way that AP2 can transition between painted lines and temporary road markings through construction areas with no fuss at all.

I was checking out "truck lust" on a long drive recently, and realised that it is not actually a thing in AP2.

When on AP, the car stays centered in the lane, regardless of whether there is truck in the next lane or not. Driving manually, I would automatically give trucks a wider gap by moving to the other side of my lane, and modify my position in the lane to keep that gap consistent.

As AP does not do that, it does seem that the car is moving towards the truck, but when you visually check the gap between rear wheels and line markings, you realise that the car remains dead center.

I guess the AP2 experience could be refined by paying attention to the vehicles in the lanes on either side of the car and modifying the lane-holding position based on what type of vehicle they are and what they are doing in their lane.

 

[bob_p]

AP2 AutoSteer is likely using the same (or close to the same) software as AP1's AutoSteer, except that Tesla Vision is replacing the input data that AP1 gets from Mobileye. So the major obstacle in getting AP2 to operate at AP1 levels should be in getting the object recognition in Tesla Vision to be at least as good as Mobileye's - which is taking longer than Tesla expected (or hoped).

AP2 doesn't appear to react to obstacles or vehicles on either side of the vehicle - and prefers to drive closer to the right side of the lane than I normally do. When passing obstacles (traffic barriers) or vehicles that are close to the lane lines, I'll take control back from AS and increase spacing.

And, I've encountered several instances where AP2 AS has been confused about the lane markings - and without taking control, I may have hit a traffic barrier (in a construction zone with temporary lane markings) and on a surface street when crossing an intersection on a curve, without any lane markings.

AP2 is getting better - but for now, I've found it may actually require more monitoring than driving without AS.

 

[boaterva]

In today's quarterly conference call, Elon finally kinda admitted that he doesn't know for sure if the current AP2 CPU board has enough horsepower to do full level 5 autonomy, but, he said that it's OK since the CPU board can be swapped out.

I was waiting for the 'free for all current owners, if needed, no problem!'. But, nope. I assume that's a given what with the 'promise' of L4 and 5. given? Would have been nice to hear it stated, though!

 

[Cosmacelf]

So the major obstacle in getting AP2 to operate at AP1 levels should be in getting the object recognition in Tesla Vision to be at least as good as Mobileye's - which is taking longer than Tesla expected (or hoped).

To be fair to Tesla, they weren't expecting to have to migrate so quickly to only AP2 hardware. They had actually incorporated Mobileye's chip into their AP2 board so that they could use AP1 for a longer period while they trained AP2, but Mobileye ordered them to rip it out.

And, I've encountered several instances where AP2 AS has been confused about the lane markings - and without taking control, I may have hit a traffic barrier (in a construction zone with temporary lane markings) and on a surface street when crossing an intersection on a curve, without any lane markings.

AP2 is getting better - but for now, I've found it may actually require more monitoring than driving without AS.

Do not trust AP1 or AP2 in a construction zone. Neither are yet designed for that.