AP1 stops working on road trips after a few hundred miles. Fine the next day.

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I bought my S new in 2016. One of the last AP1 builds. Autopilot works fine if I don't stray too far from home. Milwaukee to Chicago and back is no problem. Road trips are another story. After a few hundred miles it just stops working. No cruise control or steering wheel icons. It sees speed limit signs and the lines on the road. It does not detect vehicles. Once it stops working, it doesn't work again until the next day. It always stops working during a Supercharger stop, not while driving.

In 2017 a Ranger replaced the camera.

In 2020 the Highland Park Service Center recalibrated the front radar. On my first road trip after that I got just past Nashville from Milwaukee. Then it went out and even after an overnight hotel stay it did not come back until the day after I arrived in Florida.

In February 2022 I replaced a bubbly MCU1 with MCU2. Didn't help the AP problem.

The service center checked the logs and said there was poor visibility. The problem is due to outside environmental factors.

I don't believe that's the case. What are the odds that conditions are great every time I start a trip and bad the last 2/3 of the trip? And they change during a Supercharger stop. And why are the conditions never bad around home? I even have the luxury of planning my road trips during good weather.

I have rebooted the computer and pulled into rest stops and waited 15 minutes. No luck. It won't come back.

Any one else have these issues?

 

[AronAZ]

You could test their visibility theory simply by pulling over to clean the camera and radar. My untrained best guess is radar issue. I think it’s logging “visibility” because the radar sensor is going offline for some reason. Lines on the road comes from the camera, which appears to keep working. Cruise is tied to radar, which is also disabling. Maybe it’s overheating with continuous usage. If you have a laser thermometer, would be curious to get readings on the radar after an hour then again when it dies. (Not scientific since overheating would probably be from the inside, not outside. But could be a reference.) Could also try cooling it with cold water to test the overheating theory and see if it wakes up like it does overnight.

When it happens you could also try turning off the TACC to see if you can get cruise back at least.

I’d also ask what environmental factors would knock down radar and self heal overnight. Makes no sense if tech gives it 5 seconds of thought. Radar isn’t seriously affected by bug guts or rain. You’d have to have metal or high metallic fluids covering the sensor that miraculously fall off when parked. Even then, it wouldn’t disable, it would most likely phantom brake like mine does.

 

[Ande]

I had the same issue fixed a few times by Tesla.
They replaced the camera.
How it is possible that it needs "next day" is hard to understand.

 

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Had it in for service today. They removed the camera and cleaned everything. Checked the defog circuit. Basically did nothing that I think will solve my problem. Service man said they needed to do this before they do the next step, which is to replace the enter camera module. Of course if it doesn't solve the problem I'll be driving without cruise and AP for a good part of my 1200 mile trip to Florida in a couple days.

Service guy said it takes time for everything to reset with AP1, whereas AP3 resets quickly after an issue.

I'll be trading it in on a new S but sure don't want to stick the next guy with a lemon so will wait till my issue is resolved.