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Auto Parallel Parking feature working for anyone?

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I spent a while trying to autopark working in East Portland without luck. The curbs are kind of crappy, often with leaves/grass/etc obscuring them. No luck on a number of spots which should have worked in various neighborhoods.

But when I took my car into the suburbs with square curbs, sidewalk, and fresh asphalt, autopilot picked up a parking spot and did a pretty good job of parking. I was about 2 feet away from the cars on the right hand side, and the front of my car was about 4 feet in front of the car in front of the parking spot. I saw a [P] icon on my drivers display next to my car. To start autopark, I put the car into reverse, on the center console I got the rear view camera with a button asking if I wanted to start autopark. Hitting the button started autopark.
 
I was able to get my car to park itself on the first attempt:



The result was pretty impressive based on how quick the parking job itself was. Close enough to the curb without touching it:

IMG_1702.JPG



And about equidistant to the cars in front & back:

FullSizeRender.jpg
 
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Saw this note on facebook about getting autopark to work:

Hey guys, I'm a product specialist. We just got an email today explaining that the self park requires calibration, which in this case is simply driving the car around for several hours so the sensors can calibrate with curbs and what not. We recommend driving at 10-50mph on curvy and straight roads to speed up this process. Please let me know if you have any questions.
 
I
I was able to get my car to park itself on the first attempt:



The result was pretty impressive based on how quick the parking job itself was. Close enough to the curb without touching it:

View attachment 98129


And about equidistant to the cars in front & back:

View attachment 98130

Too bad you were not allowed to park there (yellow line).....
 
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So I went out again after work and got it to work. I don't have a video, but the 2 'secrets' that I uncovered are: a) the "P" doesn't show up until I am further past the parking spot than i would think it should - so in other words, try pulling a bit further ahead. b) it seems to NOT WORK on low or rounded curbs. Most of the newer residential curbs are rounded (think the type that you can drive up for a garage). The auto park doesn't want to work on those.
To be clear, other than driving slowly, you don't need to do anything special... be a 'normal' (at least for me lol) distance away from the cars as you drive by them, the spot has to be appropriate... it seems to fit in somewhat tight spots... but that is relative again to my perspective. Drive past the space, and drive almost past the car in front of the space and if the curb is right, you should get the P in the console, put in reverse and the 17" will show a message to begin the parking process.

View attachment 98102View attachment 98103

In the pictures above, the left/first picture is a type of curb it won't work on. The right/second picture is a square curb it will work on, and that space is pretty similar to what you need to park the car. Hopefully someone will do up an instructional video, but in lieu of that, I hope this post helped someone get it to work.

I will mention that the 3 parking jobs it did, I intervened as I was concerned about it curbing the rear wheel. I may not of, but it looked close, so I err'd on the side of of caution and aborted the maneuver. Aside from that (or if I get comfortable that it won't curb the wheel), it works well and fairly quickly. I'm not a great parallel parker, but I have done very well with the S, and the car can do it just as fast as I can.

Thank you very much for taking the time to do this. We have the type of curbs it should work on so I'll pull a little farther in front of the lead parked car and test it out. I saw on another post that the sensors needed calibration by driving around but it didn't make sense. I will let you know my results. Thanks again.

- - - Updated - - -

Not the best production quality, but here's a shot of it from my dashcam. (I have it mounted inside so I can see what valets and such do in my car.)

https://vimeo.com/142581477

Thank you! Looks like you're pulling much farther in front of the lead car than I thought was needed. I'll try again.
 
I didn't get my car to auto park yesterday after trying for quite some time with nice curbs and quite a lot of well spaced spots. I will try again today by pulling ahead even more than I did yesterday. While I applaud Tesla adding this feature I do have to say that it should NOT be this complicated to auto park a car. This feature is available on many cars today including lower end brands and they all seem to work without this effort. My wife drives a BMW i3 and I never had to read a manual or be so specific about the number of feet away from the car or the size of the spot. It just works, like a human. You pull up along cars at the distance you naturally would and it just does it. No fiddling, no driving around to calibrate. No need to go search the internet for tips and tricks. My last point is that if, indeed, the car requires such large spaces to be able to park (I have seen things like 3 feet in front and 3 in back....even just 3 feet additional total is huge), then this feature is simply not a convenience feature nor has much value to me. The idea behind self park should be, imho, to park the car properly, in tighter spots, not perform a maneuver that all drivers should be able to do easily, especially if you have 3-5 extra feet! In most urban areas, you will rarely see that kind of space available between cars.... so what?, the car is helping me park in a spot that I could fit a motorhome in? Not much advantage. It is a feature that, for Tesla, is very late to the game, not game changing and now apparently, not really that adept. A little disappointed and I hope they will work on making it easier to use and make it better at performing the task it is trying to alleviate. The whole point is that the car should be able to do these things better than me. See obstacles first. Brake first. Not get tired on highways....and parking in tight spots!

PS. The i3 Will park in spots that have about less than a foot between cars. It's quite impressive!
 
I didn't get my car to auto park yesterday after trying for quite some time with nice curbs and quite a lot of well spaced spots. I will try again today by pulling ahead even more than I did yesterday. While I applaud Tesla adding this feature I do have to say that it should NOT be this complicated to auto park a car. This feature is available on many cars today including lower end brands and they all seem to work without this effort. My wife drives a BMW i3 and I never had to read a manual or be so specific about the number of feet away from the car or the size of the spot. It just works, like a human. You pull up along cars at the distance you naturally would and it just does it. No fiddling, no driving around to calibrate. No need to go search the internet for tips and tricks. My last point is that if, indeed, the car requires such large spaces to be able to park (I have seen things like 3 feet in front and 3 in back....even just 3 feet additional total is huge), then this feature is simply not a convenience feature nor has much value to me. The idea behind self park should be, imho, to park the car properly, in tighter spots, not perform a maneuver that all drivers should be able to do easily, especially if you have 3-5 extra feet! In most urban areas, you will rarely see that kind of space available between cars so what?, The car is helping me park in a spot that I could fit a motorhome in? Not much advantage. It is a feature that, for Tesla, is very late to the game, not game changing and now apparently, not really that adept. A little disappointed and I hope they will work on making it easier to use and make it better at performing the task it is trying to alleviate. The whole point is that the car should be able to do these things better than me. See obstacles first. Brake first. Not get tired on highways....and parking in tight spots!

20 feet total, car is ~16 feet. It requires ~4 additional feet.

I already mentioned this (in this thread?) that this feature is for people who didn't grow up in a city and who can't normally parallel park. My wife (no offense to her) would love it, she can parallel park, but it's hard for her to do it. I grew up parallel parking in NYC, so the 4 extra feet requirement is silly to me.

I can see 90% of the people being satisfied with it.

OTOH, after getting the Tesla, I rarely try to squeeze into tight spaces anymore. Don't want someone to bump my bumper.
 
I understand 20 feet total. But 4 feet additional is ridiculous, sorry.

It is not just in NYC that you will never find spots that are 4 feet extra. Any urban area with city parking will be tough. In the burbs, most of the parking is with parking lots, malls and scarce cars on curbs. I do not think that 90% of the people will be happy with this nor use it, as it stands now... I guess my point is, there shouldn't be a thread discussing this kind of technology that is already very advanced and used on plenty of cars. I would thought that Tesla would have figured this out a little better :)

I get the not loving to park in dense areas with your tesla. But in the end, it is still just a car and if I can't use it to go where I want, when I want, that's not great. I prioritize parking lots and parking away from others whenever possible but it isn't always possible

20 feet total, car is ~16 feet. It requires ~4 additional feet.

I already mentioned this (in this thread?) that this feature is for people who didn't grow up in a city and who can't normally parallel park. My wife (no offense to her) would love it, she can parallel park, but it's hard for her to do it. I grew up parallel parking in NYC, so the 4 extra feet requirement is silly to me.

I can see 90% of the people being satisfied with it.

OTOH, after getting the Tesla, I rarely try to squeeze into tight spaces anymore. Don't want someone to bump my bumper.
 
I understand 20 feet total. But 4 feet additional is ridiculous, sorry.

It is not just in NYC that you will never find spots that are 4 feet extra. Any urban area with city parking will be tough. In the burbs, most of the parking is with parking lots, malls and scarce cars on curbs. I do not think that 90% of the people will be happy with this nor use it, as it stands now... I guess my point is, there shouldn't be a thread discussing this kind of technology that is already very advanced and used on plenty of cars. I would thought that Tesla would have figured this out a little better :)

I get the not loving to park in dense areas with your tesla. But in the end, it is still just a car and if I can't use it to go where I want, when I want, that's not great. I prioritize parking lots and parking away from others whenever possible but it isn't always possible

I think we're in agreement. (I'll take my car everywhere, regardless of parking situation. I've just gotten a little more picky, when there are options)
 
Saw this note on facebook about getting autopark to work:

Hey guys, I'm a product specialist. We just got an email today explaining that the self park requires calibration, which in this case is simply driving the car around for several hours so the sensors can calibrate with curbs and what not. We recommend driving at 10-50mph on curvy and straight roads to speed up this process. Please let me know if you have any questions.
If calibration is the issue, then it makes more sense why a downloaded update would work differently than a car with the software/hardware built in. The "built in" solution would presumably have all the calibration handled before the consumer gets the car, while a downloaded update doesn't have that luxury.

Looking forward to seeing what happens after a few more miles of driving -- I'm quite happy with my own parallel parking skills, but I know that my wife has said it would make her feel more comfortable parallel parking such a large car.
 
How do you activate auto-parallel park?

After playing with AP a bit yesterday (and nearly getting killed twice!), I would like to test out the auto-parallel park feature. But nobody is talking about this, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to make it work.

Anybody tried it? How did you activate it if so? Thanks!
 
After playing with AP a bit yesterday (and nearly getting killed twice!), I would like to test out the auto-parallel park feature. But nobody is talking about this, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to make it work.

Anybody tried it? How did you activate it if so? Thanks!

I couldn't get mine to active either. It is very specific, apparently, and the type of curb is important. There is a long thread on this in driving dynamics section. But, know that you are in the majority.
 
At the risk of hijacking my own thread, I tried it on a divided highway with clear lane markings. This road expands at each crossing to three lanes (added a turn lane). The car would follow to the right, get near the shoulder line then jerk hard left. Almost sent me head on into a car that was in the center lane waiting to turn.

It happens every single time on this type of road. Obviously this isn't where it's supposed to be used.
 
After playing with AP a bit yesterday (and nearly getting killed twice!), I would like to test out the auto-parallel park feature. But nobody is talking about this, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to make it work.

Anybody tried it? How did you activate it if so? Thanks!

Check out this thread for some tips and videos. Very dependant on the type of curb you are near.