Autopilot gone?

[whitex]

Still very scary that a server issue can disable crucial (taken for granted) safety features like emergency braking or forward collision warning.

A properly designed system would have 2 layers of protection against this:

1. any kind of an update system should check whether the update loaded correctly and revert to the old version of data (or worst case to no data) if it fails
2. any failure to load exception should be caught and the system should go to "no auto-pilot/safety features only" mode, rather than crash disabling all functionality

Of course, to do this would proper design to account for all possible failures, thorough testing, proper software development process - things which are in direct conflict with "run as fast as you can, duck tape it together if you have to, fail fast" Silicon Valley software company approach. The latter approach does produce faster progress, but at a cost of failures along the way since it's faster to just release something and see where it fails in the field, rather than design a robust testing system that would catch things instead.

Tesla should really clearly label all safety features as indefinite Beta, not just EAP, because they are all tied together and one can screw up the other (which is why there was no EAB or auto-wipers before AP computer software was ready).

 

[Showsol2211]

I can confirm that on my way home from work, AP worked as expected. No issues at all.

 

[boaterva]

As for the Service Center random info, I’ve given up totally. For one example, the charging problem I had last summer seems to have been caused by my never let the car sleep. They attributed it to it being charged ‘too often’. Smh. Their own doc says explicitly a plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla. That was my last straw for not listening to them. (Once I tweaked TeslaFi it never had a problem again, my bad.)

So, yeah, come here first. I still can’t believe the mothership doesn’t have a way to send flash traffic to the whole support organization when something like this happens. What if this happened when they have a fleet of 10 MM cars?!

 

[jorobsand]

Disclaimer: I am not an expert by any means on how any of this actually works...

It doesn't make sense to me that this would be an issue related to how the car can (or cannot) connect to the mothership. Inability to connect or data corruption in the connection would also mean that drivers would lose these features anywhere there is poor cell service. I for one have often found myself driving in areas for miles without any cell connection. Sure I lose mapping data temporarily, but that doesn't prevent my car from being able to use TACC or AP.

Not everyone lost functionality. If there was truly a broad mothership issue, one would reasonably expect that it would affect the entire fleet. I for one never lost any of my features. I had the same firmware and similar features as others who lost their functionality.

What makes more sense to me is that the software switch for these functions was turned off on a large set of vehicles. The cars behaved exactly like they were supposed to in this situation. The problem being that the mothership shouldn't have turned them off in the first place.

Again, pure speculation on my part but just trying to rationalize what happened based on what we do know.

 

[croman]

I also never lost anything nor can I dechipher any pattern among those affected. Bizarre.

 

[JohnnyG]

I have no idea if this is related, however....

On my drive this morning, I noticed a never before seen (by me) breach in AP's built-in safety parameters.

I was driving on the same local 4-lane road I always have. Two lanes southbound, two lanes northbound, separated by a double yellow line.

I was in the lefthand land (closest to double yellow line). I noticed that the IC showed a valid lane to the right and to the left of me. Out of curiosity, I turned on my lefthand turn signal. The IC changed the left solid blue line to a dashed one, and proceeded to change lanes to the left; crossing the double yellow line, moving into the oncoming lane.

Conditions were sunny and clear. It continued to do this for the few miles I was on that road.

It has never once either showed a valid lane across a double yellow line, nor allowed me to initiate a lane change across a double yellow line.

I find this quite troubling...

 

[cmalinowski]

Model X 100D v2018.42.2......no autopilot, lane lines, other vehicles, auto-wipe (stuck in a 3 hour rainstorm from Jersey to DC, ugh)....After 50 minutes on phone with support they said there is a "system-wide" outage and hope to have it fixed tonight. We shall see.

Same trip I had without AP... only to Baltimore, so not quite as bad. But not having even cruise control was really crappy.

I have no idea if this is related, however....

On my drive this morning, I noticed a never before seen (by me) breach in AP's built-in safety parameters.

I was driving on the same local 4-lane road I always have. Two lanes southbound, two lanes northbound, separated by a double yellow line.

I was in the lefthand land (closest to double yellow line). I noticed that the IC showed a valid lane to the right and to the left of me. Out of curiosity, I turned on my lefthand turn signal. The IC changed the left solid blue line to a dashed one, and proceeded to change lanes to the left; crossing the double yellow line, moving into the oncoming lane.

Conditions were sunny and clear. It continued to do this for the few miles I was on that road.

It has never once either showed a valid lane across a double yellow line, nor allowed me to initiate a lane change across a double yellow line.

I find this quite troubling...

Hope you got video of that. I'd send that to Tesla.

 

[whitex]

Disclaimer: I am not an expert by any means on how any of this actually works...

It doesn't make sense to me that this would be an issue related to how the car can (or cannot) connect to the mothership. Inability to connect or data corruption in the connection would also mean that drivers would lose these features anywhere there is poor cell service. I for one have often found myself driving in areas for miles without any cell connection. Sure I lose mapping data temporarily, but that doesn't prevent my car from being able to use TACC or AP.

Not everyone lost functionality. If there was truly a broad mothership issue, one would reasonably expect that it would affect the entire fleet. I for one never lost any of my features. I had the same firmware and similar features as others who lost their functionality.

What makes more sense to me is that the software switch for these functions was turned off on a large set of vehicles. The cars behaved exactly like they were supposed to in this situation. The problem being that the mothership shouldn't have turned them off in the first place.

Again, pure speculation on my part but just trying to rationalize what happened based on what we do know.

If you read carefully what others have said, you will notice that it's not the inability to connect to the mothership that is the suggested theory of what went wrong. Rather, it's the mothership giving out bad or corrupted data, possibly only to some cars, causing the AP computer to crash. Think of it this way, AP computer is getting high resolution map updates like your car, except a lot more often and without telling you about it. It can still drive without updates and the frequency of updates depends on how far you drive or if you visit new areas. The problem could further have been constrained to only certain car configurations/version, or only certain maps, or maybe even only the unlucky cars which connected to one of the distributed cloud servers which was malfunctioning. To complete the analogy to your regular software updates, imagine if some cars stopped working after an update, that would make sense to you and you wouldn't question why not all cars died a the same time, only cars that got the bad update. The difference is, your regular software update you schedule and it shuts the car down for the duration, while the AP computer map updates happen in the background, without you knowing. Does that make more sense now?

 

[HOV_lane]

Same thing happened to me today. I installed v9 overnight last night, got in car this morning and partway thru drive got a notice that cameras were now calibrated. [There was no traffic until then so I didn't even notice that AP wasn't available]. Drove with AP the rest of the way to work (22 miles across Los Angeles) then this evening coming home, no AP. Screen had no lines as others have posted. And yes, there was traffic. Lots and lots of traffic....

Do people think that Tesla will send out an over the air update (or even do a rollback)?

 

[pinball_player]

I had the same issue on Tuesday. It died while driving along a back road, and then came back when I stopped for about 15 minutes. The service center pushed 2018.42.3 to my car which did not fix the issue, but the next day it is working again.

I called the 877 number and was told that this is a known common issue, and I am on the list to get the fix when they figure out what is happening.

Anyways, I wish that Tesla had better beta testers. I have seem too many issues like this which would have been caught had they had people who actually drive a long distance every day on a variety of roads like I do.

 

[cpd1]

Closing the loop on my side, AP came back Tuesday night, although software still 42.2.
Naively I was expecting a call back or email form Tesla support but then I thought better of it.
Still given it happened to multiple cars and when lost basic safety items some of which are important drivers of having bought the car in the first place, I would have expected Tesla to take this more seriously.

 

[JohnnyG]

I have no idea if this is related, however....

On my drive this morning, I noticed a never before seen (by me) breach in AP's built-in safety parameters.

I was driving on the same local 4-lane road I always have. Two lanes southbound, two lanes northbound, separated by a double yellow line.

I was in the lefthand land (closest to double yellow line). I noticed that the IC showed a valid lane to the right and to the left of me. Out of curiosity, I turned on my lefthand turn signal. The IC changed the left solid blue line to a dashed one, and proceeded to change lanes to the left; crossing the double yellow line, moving into the oncoming lane.

Conditions were sunny and clear. It continued to do this for the few miles I was on that road.

It has never once either showed a valid lane across a double yellow line, nor allowed me to initiate a lane change across a double yellow line.

I find this quite troubling...

Hope you got video of that. I'd send that to Tesla.

Same thing occurred this morning. Here's a couple points of interest...

1. When there is oncoming traffic, the available lane to the left disappears from the IC.
2. If there is a center turn lane, the available lane to the left disappears from the IC.

I tried to catch a quick video of it, but for the sake of safety, this was all I got...

 

[cpd1]

Same issue happened today. Anybody else?
60mls into a 150mls drive, sunny day, Cruise not available message.
Tesla never explained what happened the first time, no way to even call them today as closed for holidays...
Very weird and it has to be software related to the car, can’t be a Tesla server thing

 

[cmalinowski]

Same issue happened today. Anybody else?
60mls into a 150mls drive, sunny day, Cruise not available message.
Tesla never explained what happened the first time, no way to even call them today as closed for holidays...
Very weird and it has to be software related to the car, can’t be a Tesla server thing

I never saw it again. My fingers are crossed that I don't. Thanks for posting. Would be interesting if others had same issue again (I haven't read through forums yet to see. Been away for a bit).

Chris

 

[bedoig]

Anybody having this again? Haven't seen any reports today so maybe it's just me, but I lost all autopilot / TACC, auto wipers, and auto screen brightness today. Maybe my whole front camera module is going out or something.

 

[BrooksCA]

It's kinda scary that something can go awry on Tesla's side and then poof, no more AP.

Anyone on AP1 able to confirm whether or not this happened to them? I won't be heading out of work for a few hours.

Yes I have a 12/14 MS. It has happened several times but reboot has fixed.

 

[Videofrank]

Not sure if this is the same thing everyone else is experiencing. I have a 2015 P85D and lost autopilot a couple weeks ago but didnt notice since I don't drive that much. I believe it happened after the last update. Also lost collision detection.

Made an appointment for this Monday. I got this from the dealer yesterday. It's a list of all the things they are addressing during my service appointment. The first couple things are recall related things, replacing bolts in the steering rack and replacing airbag. Here is what they are doing to address the autopilot issue.