AP 2.0 - Lets log our experiences

[Mobius484]

Overall I'm impressed. Not that many situations I can use it. 55 mph limit too low for highways. On local roads I have 2 complaints. 1: the speed assist often wants to set the TACC too fast. The car accelerates abruptly, sometimes wanting to go 40 mph on a 25 mph road. I have to quickly adjust but it is alarming. 2: auto steer has a problem at intersections where the lane lines are interrupted. The car try's to veer right or left. You have to be ready to take control.

Agree with above. Nice assessment.

 

[BeesKnees]

Agreed. Note TACC is adjustable prior to engaging. My habit has become to do that.

 

[dsnows]

Agreed. Note TACC is adjustable prior to engaging. My habit has become to do that.

I realized I was turning TACC on by pulling the lever toward me and this sets the speed automatically by speed assist. Sometimes the speed assist misinterprets the actual speed limit. I now set the TACC by moving the lever up or down which sets it to your current speed. I then adjust up or down as desired.

 

[_jal_]

I use AutoSteer back and forth to work all the time on the highway. There's always traffic so the 55 mph limit isn't a problem. Over the last 2 weeks I would say that I have had 0 problems on the highway. It even gracefully handles cars merging into my lane. No exit ramp following. Local roads are trickier, but still good. Definitely better at following curves, but it does steer wide sometimes. Definitely a huge improvement over the first release w AutoSteer

 

[feslatan]

I have AP2 hardware on my X 75D with EAP and full autonomy features, and haven't tried AP once. I get to the opt in page where it suggests waiting until there are a few hundred million miles under AP2's belt and think 'almost there, but not yet.'

I know this isn't the usual performance report but I bet there are a lot of folks like me and I figured I should be represented.

Maybe when AP highway limits are up to 70-75mph I'll give it a go.

 

[pbleic]

Overall, I am impressed on theoretical issues, but terrified on practical ones. I traded in my non-AP, rear wheel drive Model S after 3 years for a new one with HW2 and AP2 to get 4WD and AP. Have had one AP software update allowing me to drive at 55 on highways. Here are a few observations, some beyond the ones mentioned in recent posts.

1. Lane following: Mostly pretty good, until it isn't. This improved with the software update, but there are still times on local roads where the car goes in search of a curb.

2. Significant Curves: This is very scary. The car doesn't "know" that you should slow before a curve and accelerate through it. This is something motorcyclists know VERY well. The car seems to hold speed right up to the curve. There is no major curve I have driven where I haven't had to take control of the car.

3. Cross Streets: The car should maintain direction/course for X feet, corresponding to the size of the cross street. Right now, it veers to the right when it loses the markings at an intersection.

4. Jerky Driving: I really don't like being in a cab or Uber when the driver drives a little too fast and taps the brakes a lot. That is often what it feels like to be in the car when it is running on a straight road for some time.

5. Weird, Unexpected Braking: I have had several experience, especially when going under underpasses into shadows, where the car brakes suddenly to slow by 10-15 mph just because it is going down into a shadow beneath an underpass.

6. Traffic Lights, Stop Signs and Lane Changing: Stops AP and requires a restart. Makes it almost useless on local roads.

7. Arbitrary Road Assignments: I live in Boston, and drive Storrow Drive frequently. This is an old school two land (each direction) divided parkway that runs along the Charles River. It is classified as a local road and won't allow AP above the local road limit, which is useless when there isn't traffic (and even when there is).

8. Auto Park (ok, not exactly AP, but I didn't want to write two threads): Works great most of the time except it seems somewhat oblivious to cars that decide to continue driving from behind you while you park. I have had to take control frequently to prevent an accident. Would it have stopped? Possibly, but it sure didn't look like it.

9. Incorrect Speed Limits: Seems to get incorrect speed limits, especially where there has been recent construction. There are places on the Mass Pike near the Cambridge interchange (for locals) where it goes down to 30-35 for no reason. Challenging on a 55 MPH highway.

10. Fully Autonomous Driving: I thought about this, and decided against buying it. If I had, I would be really angry. Based on what I can see, this is YEARS away, as described, even in good weather with road markings. I can't imagine making sharp turns in wet weather or with black ice. What is the point of something that will occasionally be useful for 80% of a fair weather ride in getting you from here to there. A $3K toy or gimmick. As it is, I feel like I paid for something (AP2) that is "not ready for prime time." I especially liked a post that described it as driving with a young child or baby in your lap. I am finding it hard to imagine when the relaxing and stress relieving cross over point will occur with learning.

 

[malcolm]

Overall, I am impressed on theoretical issues, but terrified on practical ones......

Thank you for posting this.

Once you get 8.1 would you be able to edit your post to show any changes (better or worse) which you experience?

Thanks in advance.

 

[OBX John]

Fully Autonomous Driving: I thought about this, and decided against buying it. If I had, I would be really angry. Based on what I can see, this is YEARS away, as described, even in good weather with road markings. I can't imagine making sharp turns in wet weather or with black ice. What is the point of something that will occasionally be useful for 80% of a fair weather ride in getting you from here to there. A $3K toy or gimmick. As it is, I feel like I paid for something (AP2) that is "not ready for prime time." I especially liked a post that described it as driving with a young child or baby in your lap. I am finding it hard to imagine when the relaxing and stress relieving cross over point will occur with learning.

AP2 is definitely still taking baby steps, and it is a bit harder to imagine FSD after spending many hours letting it drive me up and down the beach road here on the Outer Banks. I do somewhat regret spending the $3k. Wish I'd upgraded the audio instead.

It does reduce my stress though - I could take the by-pass and go 50mph, but 35mph down a straight road where I don't have to focus on the second by second driving is relaxing to me at least. I just kind of sit back and watch it drive, listen to music, look around, and check my phone when there's no traffic or pedestrians. I'm fairly confident when there's a car ahead of me as well, as I've not had any cases where I had to take control when in stop and start traffic.

I think it can handle long boring stretches of road or traffic jams in it's current form. Hoping for better with 8.1 comes along. And I'll be somewhat happy I paid for FSD if that will turn off the "hold the wheel" alarm every minute. That's about the extent of my ambition for it this year.

All I really want right now is no speed restriction - even a bump to 45mph for local roads will make it much more useful for me since we have a straight road that goes 30+ miles with limits of 35-45mph. I would imagine anyone in a city would find it fairly useless though since as you noted, it's terrible with curves and curbs, and not great at handling cross streets. The only real danger with it is driver overconfidence, and I don't think anyone is confident with the software doing anything but easy, straight driving. But that describes 90% of my road trips.

I see it as a useful but limited tool at this point.

 

[mitchellh3]

All I really want right now is no speed restriction - even a bump to 45mph for local roads will make it much more useful for me since we have a straight road that goes 30+ miles with limits of 35-45mph. I would imagine anyone in a city would find it fairly useless though since as you noted, it's terrible with curves and curbs, and not great at handling cross streets.

Here here. 45 mph would go along way to making local road autosteer useful.

I live in a suburb of LA and drive a lot of wide, straight, well marked local roads. But the speed limit on all of them is 45 mph. 35 mph is too slow to drive unless its 8 PM or later at night and you're in the right-most lane. A bump to 45 mph would be all I really need here. Most people will dive 50 mph but if I was in the right lane I could get away with 45 anytime of the day.

Drove ~2 hours on AP2 (17.9.3) today on highway + local roads after sunset. As a software engineer I like trying to find the edges of software and given I only drove 2 hours its not a ton of data but I was able to reliably reproduce a few things:

• Inside-lane local road curves: Inconsistent results mean you have to be on high alert every time. Sometimes it takes a curve fine, sometimes it decides it needs to go a few feet across the center lane marker. Given the latter scenario POSSIBLY happening, I couldn't in good faith execute curves when I saw other cars coming and cancelled AP2. I tried the same curve a dozen or more times though and it was inconsistent.
• Outside-lane local road curves: Does a decent job of hugging the inside line. The only issue is that periodically it would identify one of the parked cars on the side of the curve as a car in front of it and make a sudden stop. If a car was behind me it would be pretty jarring. The same curve, same cars, same time of day and it sometimes would see the car and stop and sometimes execute the curve fine. Again, inconsistency means I can't trust it enough.
• Poor identification of stopped cars at local road red light: Coming into a red light at full speed (35 mph) my AP2 had a really tough time picking up parked cars at the signal. I had to break manually every time. It seems to pick them up eventually but it is REALLY close to the car and I wouldn't feel comfortable letting it stop manually. Note that if the car is moving even slightly it does a good job picking it up from a distance.
• The slowing down can get pretty late: Even with car distance set to 7 (max), there were times that it'd wait an uncomfortably long time to start slowing down when the car in front was slowing down, causing a pretty jerky stop/go behavior. I saw this on both highways and local roads. I think a lot of improvements can be made in the "smoothness" of the accel/deccel.
• Highway AP at 55 mph was pretty good! Highway Autopilot was pretty good at current max speed (55 mph). Handled the highway curves well and the stop/go was decent.

My conclusion so far is that its not super useful except for basic stop/go traffic at the moment but its not far off from being useful in a lot more scenarios.

I'm really interested and excited to see this evolve! I'll be trying the same roads, curves, etc. on future AP2 updates.

 

[malcolm]

Bump

Any updates from the same owners/routes driven?

Longer-term comparisons would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance.