Autopilot only works if I leave the headlights on!!!

[dusty22]

No, they will turn on even in mid-day if it is a cloudy day and the front of the car is facing away from the sun, or if the car is in enough shade, I've seen it many times.

I've seen that too. I sometimes drive on back roads in the middle of a cloudless sunny day and the shade from trees turns them on. The sun to shade, shade to sun, headlights on and off reminds me of the high beams on Autopilot flashing on and off before the updates that fixed that problem.

 

[parrainx]

This has been tested and confirmed. My base AP in my 3 only works if I leave the headlights on in a certain driving situation.

Lemme 'splain. Your first question may be "Whaddaya mean IF you leave the headlights on? They are on by default!". Not in my 3 they aren't. For nearly 4 years, I get in the car, enter the LOCK CODE (from the start of the Transporter 2 movie, that sounds cooler than "pin to drive"), and I manually TURN THE HEADLIGHTS OFF. I'm a man of principle and have been driving for 30+ years, I don't need some Tesla engineer to decide when my headlights should be on! I don't care if I'm only driving a mile, I manually turn the headlights off!!!

So anyway, I drive a 20 mile stretch of highway to go to work, either north or south on this road. Driving north is no problem, the AP works well nearly all the time.

But coming south on this same road, with similar quality paint lines, AP is tripping off constantly, if it will even go on at all. I took my 3 into the service center, and they said the AP is working fine. Sometimes AP will work when driving south on this road, but mostly it does not.

A few days ago, I had to work an odd shift for 3 days that had me coming home late at night in the dark. So my headlights were on. And the AP worked fine when driving south, the whole 20 miles.

So today, driving home at 8 am, I ran a little test. I left the headlights on. And what do you know, AP was working fine. About 6 times, I turned the headlights off, and within 10 seconds, I am getting the alarm and the bright red steering wheel on the screen, and the AP trips off. It'll maintain speed, but it won't steer.

Then I turned the headlights back on, and reactivated AP, and it came back on and worked fine.... until I turned the headlights off again. Over and over for 20 miles.

My guess is the headlights reflect off the paint lines just a little bit extra, enough to keep AP happy. This never used to be an issue in nearly 4 years and 81,000 miles of driving. I guess some recent update made the AP a little more picky as to the quality of road paint lines that it needs.

Anyone else notice this?

Do you shower with the water off.

 

[Ciaopec]

Some people need to sell their Teslas and return to the complexities of understanding and using basic cruise control. I, too, have been turning lights on and off manually for 30+ years until the "old man meme" forced me to accept technology. It was baby steps at first: learning to text 'teens to communicate; then clunky, clicky remote garage door openers(now incorporated into the car); then remote home light control on a small, hand held computer that doubles as a phone; finally, (I know I've missed something ) AUTO headlights! I've become a regular Buck Rogers!
P.S. Any help or advice on the blinking 12:00 on my VCR? Thanks in advance.

 

[Dewg]

Are you on the latest firmware? This sounds like the behavior of the older firmware, where you could enable Driver Assist and then disable auto headlights and wipers. With the latest firmware, auto headlights and wipers are mandatory and cannot be disabled while using any ADAS functions.