With HW3 on version 2020.28.5, I just took a long drive yesterday - windy roads through magnificent redwood forests, up and down oceanside mountains, on both unprotected highways and on full freeways, and quite a bit on small town streets. Gorgeous day for a 200 mile California drive.
OK, first of all, people who only have basic AP aren't seeing NOA FSD, which is quite well developed, and different from using basic AP, even on a freeway. That's where the display shows a centered blue line, not two lines on the sides of the car (that's basic AP). NOA's where you can say "navigate to XYZ" and it finds it and once on the freeway, it just gets you there, even through the most insane overpass mazes, that i'm (I confess) too nervous to handle smoothly in manual. So, Tesla, on that - Bravo.
So, anyway, I never had anything odd happen on the freeways in NOA mode. NOA performed excellently, with, as noted, faster and smarter lane changes. I've always used Mad Max lane change mode, but I'm considering dropping it down a notch, as it now DELIGHTS in changing lanes, like a bloody ballerina, which it does darned well. The precautionary "leaving passing lane" works great. So those full AP NOA parts of the journey were relaxing and fully 1st world.
Now. On basic AP, both on highways and streets, we can witness a lot of work in progress, moving towards greater autonomy. On streets there's an almost paranoid tone now, slowing down for all sorts of potential problems, which in turn creates a few annoying annoyances of its own. Personally I don't care, I don't eat Thai noodles while driving, I stay on top of the beast, and we get along just fine. It's smarter in so many ways that I don't get upset at its mistakes. And you probably don't want to spook it (or passengers) by yelling at it. But people who are new to a Tesla need to realize it takes a while to get good at operating a semi-autonomous vehicle that changes with every update. Or maybe for now only use AP where it's most predictable. Don't keep barreling into situations where you've seen it get confused only to see it do it again! Just tap out and then tap back into AP. It's there to serve, not fight with.
Even in full Manual I was impressed with how it warned me about all sorts of proximities. Like the big cop car SUV getting too close to me in a small town traffic jam.
IMHO, one of the most unpredictable areas at the moment is where say a 4 lane highway is driven in basic AP. It may even look like a freeway, but if there are intersections, it ain't. Then it's operating under "street" rules. I wasn't surprised to see the car occasionally slow down for ambiguously positioned lights at cross-roads, those elaborate construction warning blinky boos, home of a future stoplight, that kind of stuff. Just another thing to watch out for until the programmers and the neural soup gradually work it out.
Starting out for adventure yesterday I was expecting worse, so I was pleasantly surprised.
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