Autopilot in New Zealand

[Kiwiadventure]

I was using full autopilot today but the car would not change lanes to move to the left lane or move to West Harbour/Kumeu off ramp . America is well ahead of NZ with full Autopilot. Still heaps of fun and well worth the dollars just for true life computer game.

 

[DanBoy]

Not sure about other people’s thoughts but I have been totally underwhelmed by the Autopilot. It works great on the new nice bits of motorway here in Christchurch but would have killed me half a dozen times in the last 2 months on most other roads if I hadn’t been watching like a hawk (yes I know you have too). I have had around 8 occasions of phantom emergency braking when the car just slams on the anchors with nothing in front and a few occasions of the steering wheel wobble followed by it veering towards the hard shoulder. Tesla have run some diagnostics and seem to think it is the state of some of the roads and marking etc. I do not have FSD so not sure if that makes a difference but I just can’t see FSD happening for many many years based on my A/P experiences. Still totally in love with the car though and can’t wait to get my Model Y to go with it.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

It's the narrow streets and road makings as well numerous other events the car sees but I don't.
Today I had two reasonably tight car parks to back the car out off so I used summon for the first time in a packed carpark area and worked great. The first summon was a car parked to close and was too tight to open the driver door so I backed the car out and the other was a boxed in tight carpark and the car had to do a 5 point turn while I waited at the factory entry door. I'll be using it more often now I know works fine. When I took my finger off the summon button the car stopped real fast almost making the ties skid.

 

[Ecoli]

Sounds like you used summon and smart summon

Summon is great for cramped carpark .

I've tried smart summon with varied results
I've not tried it on the new software

Smart summon worked perfectly backed out drove pretty much straight to me I was maybe 20 meters away

Tied it a few days later same carpark same location a bit further away and it did a 50 point turn
and drove off away from me heading for the main road at that point I aborted.

Tired again same location same distance away
Started heading the opposite direction again
heading for a curb lost my nerve and a aborted again.

I think results all depend on how well the carpark is mapped

I think being further away it chose to drive around the carpark to come to me
The time it worked I was closer and it could just back out at drive pretty much straight to me.
Not sure why the 50 point turn on the other attempts. Maybe it was confused with the carpark mapping and trying to figure out how to get to me.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

There is no carpark mapping the car takes the shortest distance which it did for me when I first tried it late evening. The car cut across all the empty carparks and went around a light pole.

 

[Matt_NZ]

Not sure about other people’s thoughts but I have been totally underwhelmed by the Autopilot. It works great on the new nice bits of motorway here in Christchurch but would have killed me half a dozen times in the last 2 months on most other roads if I hadn’t been watching like a hawk (yes I know you have too). I have had around 8 occasions of phantom emergency braking when the car just slams on the anchors with nothing in front and a few occasions of the steering wheel wobble followed by it veering towards the hard shoulder. Tesla have run some diagnostics and seem to think it is the state of some of the roads and marking etc. I do not have FSD so not sure if that makes a difference but I just can’t see FSD happening for many many years based on my A/P experiences. Still totally in love with the car though and can’t wait to get my Model Y to go with it.

For now, one shouldn't be expecting Autopilot to be that great off the motorways, as it's currently designed for motorway use. If it gets things right off the motorway then that's a bonus.

 

[Lozza12]

I don’t have FSD but I’ve noticed Autopilot doesn’t cope well with cars parked on the verge or when there’s any kind of lane merge or lane split.

With the former it often slams on the brakes or will get very close on the front left. With the latter I’ve had it freak out and turn itself off with lots of alarms and red flashing lights. In bumper to bumper traffic it turned off and put the car into P when it lost the right side lane marking and a car came up alongside to turn right.

There is no way it will cope with our windy, poorly marked rural roads or any major roundabout like at Greenlane in Auckland.

It does well on motorways though and I happily use it to maintain distance with the car in front or when I’m fiddling with the screen for music etc.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

What I do is use the go people to keep the car moving through areas which I believe may be a problem while still using autopilot. Back roads with no road side markings works well on standard autopilot.

 

[CAM3RON]

Cars parked on residential streets seem to overwhelm Autopilot. Otherwise, as others have said, great for motorways and clearly marked city streets.

 

[jeffnz]

I’ve only got AP but yeah I’ve found that cars parked on side is ok until you come to a turn and I guess it sees the car now in front and hits the brakes. So, I’ve given up trying on residential streets. And agree on the motorway or especially in stop-n-go traffic even on side streets it’s really great and makes that much more relaxing.

 

[ecarfan]

Would not recommend using AP on any roads except restricted access motorways (what we call “freeways” in the US) where there is no cross traffic or cars parked on the side of the road. AP can be very good on motorways. Anything else is risky. Please be careful.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

AP will stop the car but standard cruise control will not so I find AP safer to use. We have speed cameras on street poles and in parked vans so AP is good for not receiving speeding tickets and I'm also more able to now recognise obstacles ahead which may effect AP so I'll take over from AP or help it along from not phantom braking with the cars accelerator ever so slightly above the AP set speed. As I've said before its a live true life video game which you have to be in full control of otherwise don't use AP.

 

[Ecoli]

There is no carpark mapping the car takes the shortest distance which it did for me when I first tried it late evening. The car cut across all the empty carparks and went around a light pole.

Exactly depending on the carpark that's a sign the carpark may not be mapped correctly.

Smart summon uses open street maps for carparks according to the US forum. Owners have been submitting updated carpark maps to open Street maps to improve smart summon. So it follows lanes recognizes intersections etc in carparks

 

[Kiwiadventure]

It will be share good luck if NZ adopts any of this from overseas.

 

[Matt_NZ]

I got my Model 3 today and obviously, I had to play around with Autopilot. It was all done with v9 software since v10 hadn't been installed before delivery. Most of it was on the motorways but I did also use it on some back roads without any drama. The only issue I really had with phantom breaking was exiting the waterview tunnel

 

[Kiwiadventure]

I got my Model 3 today and obviously, I had to play around with Autopilot. It was all done with v9 software since v10 hadn't been installed before delivery. Most of it was on the motorways but I did also use it on some back roads without any drama. The only issue I really had with phantom breaking was exiting the waterview tunnel

Congratulation with taking delivery of your Tesla.
v10 does not make much difference over v9 AP. I've never had AP phantom brake either of the tunnel only my wipers coming on once on a clear day as I entered the tunnel.

 

[Ecoli]

It will be share good luck if NZ adopts any of this from overseas.

Yeh I don't think many NZers would know about it
Or bother spending the time mapping carparks
From what I've read it sounds a bit hard and not all that all that easy to do

 

[Ecoli]

Drove a model S yesterday
V9 2019.24.4.73
AP seemed much smoother than my M3
V10.1 2019.40.2.1
On the moterway noticed the model S handled cars merging into my lane much better than the M3. M3 seems to either not notice cars merging
Or behave almost like its suprised or ignore when car tries to merge .

The S behaved more like attentive human driver
The 3 more like distracted teenager unaware of its surroundings

 

[Kiwiadventure]

Looks like it won't be long and I'll be able to sit in the back seat after a few drinks as the car drives me home and the money spent will be well worth it.
Tesla to roll out Full-Self driving 'sneak preview' and new games in holiday software update

 

[Ecoli]

Looks like it won't be long and I'll be able to sit in the back seat after a few drinks as the car drives me home and the money spent will be well worth it.
Tesla to roll out Full-Self driving 'sneak preview' and new games in holiday software update

Wouldn't count on the sneak preview being available for NZ, we still haven't got NoA