Have you driven other cars, or is your opinion based on the article?
The article contains a decent experimental test. Not sure why it's not relevant, but I base it on that article, plus Road & Track and several other articles that say it's the best out there, plus youtube videos of other systems operating in the real world.
The auto lane change is somewhat of a gimmick, as it can't detect if there are cars behind you
Well you could argue most of the stuff in a luxury sedan is a gimmick. That's irrelevant to the argument.
No, it can't detect if there are cars well behind you and closing quickly on you. But it will see slightly behind, to the side, and slightly ahead. That doesn't invalidate its usefulness.
sometimes it doesn't want to change lanes when there are no cars.
In areas where autopilot is intended to be used, I find it to work almost 100% of the time. If it doesn't change lanes, I've found that almost always there is an understandable reason--e.g. the lane is a solid white line or the start of a turn lane, or there is a vehicle too close to where the nose would be to allow a safe following distance.
In addition, the auto lane change is very slow, if I need to change lanes normally (not if I'm driving out in the boonies, where there are very few cars), I'm often forced to disable AP, change lanes, and then re-enable AP.
I disagree here too...I think it changes lanes at the "recommended" speed. Obviously there are times where you will want to change lanes faster (e.g. you're coming up on traffic stopped in your lane), but for highway driving as intended the lane change speed seems right to me.
This is 100% a gimmick. When it can parallel park or perpendicular park with no one in the car, then I'll give them more weight.
Yes, a gimmick...but that does not invalidate the point. Parallel or perpendicular parking with no one in the car is just as gimmicky.
Your hands should be on the wheel at all times, even with the Tesla (sure, no one does it), so the nags should be irrelevant
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Given the number of threads with people annoyed by them, and the number of Mercedes and other drivers that attach weights to their steering wheels, I'd have to disagree that it's irrelevant there too. But I see your smiley wink
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I have it cross through intersections too, but it often drifts out of lane, and then has to correct when it sees the lane markings again. I don't use that feature often.
Sure, it's not perfect...but if you're following another car, it's pretty reliable (assuming that car doesn't illegally change lanes in the middle of the intersection)...and as long as there's no significant curve or jog in the middle of the intersection, it tracks pretty well. I would say that on a typical daily commute, I cross through about 100 urban/suburban intersections on autopilot (probably 75% of the intersections on my daily drive where I'm not turning), and I only have to correct the system probably less than 10% of the time--and most of those are slight pulls one way or the other. OK, you don't use it much, but it's still something other systems can't do.
Tesla did a great job with the PR on AP. But there are many other companies who offer the technology at a slightly reduced maturity level.
Except that Car & Driver, Road & Track, and several other car magazines don't seem to think the differences are as small as you do. Sorry, I just put more weight in the opinion of people whose job it is to test and criticize cars...especially when no Tesla advertising goes to pay for those magazines.
Autopilot is obviously nowhere near autonomous driving. There are plenty of situations where you have to take over...I'm not arguing that. But clearly your idea of "slightly better" and my idea of "slightly better" are pretty different.
