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Autopilot suddenly disabled

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hydro 481

Active Member
Sep 4, 2017
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USA
I was using Autopilot today for about 15-20 min when I suddenly got the alert that autosteer was unavailable and I was forced to take over. Has this happened to anyone else? Luckily it occurred when the car was going fairly straight. If autopilot had shutdown during a curve section of the freeway I might not have reacted in time. Really dangerous to be honest. Not sure why it did this. I couldn’t activate it again until my trip home. I didn’t ignore any nags to keep your hand on the wheel or anything.
 
...Really dangerous to be honest..

It sounds like you are not using it correctly.

Incorrect use can lead to crashes.

I've been using it since the early 2017 and it has been doing all kinds of crazy stuff but at no times that I lost the control even for 1 second.

Are you sure you've been able to get tactile feedback from the system at all times?

I've been applying a light torque on the steering wheel continuously and in so doing, I can feel instantly whether it's steering correctly or not.

Even if there's an Autopilot Outage (Autopilot computer crash) or in your scenario, I never lost the control at all.

If use it correctly, it's very safe and relaxing.
 
Sounds like you've experienced what's known as autopilot jail.

What caused it to put you into jail?

Probably didn't respond to the nags correctly. The nags aren't really asking you to hold the steering wheel, but to place a slight amount of torque on it. This will make the nag go away, and prevent getting nagged.

I do this, and only get nagged when I'm lazy about it. It is really annoying and I can't wait for the time where it's no longer needed.

The other way into Autopilot jail is to override the speed with the throttle and to temporarily exceed 90mph. For some reason Tesla decided this was a bad, and AP would get disabled for the rest of the trip. It annoys people driving on freeways with high speed limits.
 
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Sounds like you've experienced what's known as autopilot jail.

What caused it to put you into jail?

Probably didn't respond to the nags correctly. The nags aren't really asking you to hold the steering wheel, but to place a slight amount of torque on it. This will make the nag go away, and prevent getting nagged.

I do this, and only get nagged when I'm lazy about it. It is really annoying and I can't wait for the time where it's no longer needed.

The other way into Autopilot jail is to override the speed with the throttle and to temporarily exceed 90mph. For some reason Tesla decided this was a bad, and AP would get disabled for the rest of the trip. It annoys people driving on freeways with high speed limits.

This isn’t AP jail. I’ve experienced exactly what the OP describes 2 or 3 times the past few months. The most recent was just last week. I was driving on AP while providing sufficient feedback torque on the wheel to keep the nags at bay. Out of nowhere it starts beeping like crazy with a big red steering wheel on the screen telling me to take over immediately which I did. After that I lost all lane line and vehicle renderings on the screen. It seemed like something crashed with the AP system. A few minutes later it recovered without me having to reboot or pull over and park. Once I saw the lane lines on the screen again I was able to re-engage AP and it worked fine for the remainder of my drive. I’m hoping the 2019.28.2 update I just received tonight is less prone to these sudden and unexpected AP system crashes.
 
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Do you have Sentry enabled?

You might be running into a bug with Sentry that would cause problems with AutoPilot.

I don’t think it would shutdown once active but would refuse to turn on. But I don’t know if it could cause other issues as well.

Just a thought
 
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This isn’t AP jail. I’ve experienced exactly what the OP describes 2 or 3 times the past few months. The most recent was just last week. I was driving on AP while providing sufficient feedback torque on the wheel to keep the nags at bay. Out of nowhere it starts beeping like crazy with a big red steering wheel on the screen telling me to take over immediately which I did. After that I lost all lane line and vehicle renderings on the screen. It seemed like something crashed with the AP system. A few minutes later it recovered without me having to reboot or pull over and park. Once I saw the lane lines on the screen again I was able to re-engage AP and it worked fine for the remainder of my drive. I’m hoping the 2019.28.2 update I just received tonight is less prone to these sudden and unexpected AP system crashes.

I was going off the "I couldn't activate it again"

Now that doesn't rule out some glitch that prevented it from being re-enaged until the return trip.
 
I had the same happening with our Model X 100D 12/2017 several times.
It looks like the AP computer reboots for no reason.
I’m wondering if they would replace the computer with the new AP3 computer if it keeps rebooting about once or twice a week while on AP?!
It’s pretty annoying to loose AP while engaged and don’t see any renderings (lanes and cars) for several minutes and then comes back without doing anything...
 
This is a bug. I’ve experienced this in the past and worked with Tesla to correct it in one specific place that this would occur almost 2 out of 3 times. They resolved the issue in an update but it seems to have resurfaced (with less frequency). Immediately after the issue, autopilot and auto steering is unavailable as the AP computer resets and calibrates. During this time the car does not sense other cars in the environment and your car appears as the only car on the road.

You should file a bug report, open a case with Tesla and send video if you happened to record it.
 
You're lucky you got the red "TAKE OVER IMMEDIATELY" display. On three separate instances on different firmwares the AutoPilot computer has crashed and all I got was a tiny "auto steer unavailable" on the screen. No beep. No warning. Just stopped working.
 
Just had this problem this morning and have had it several times in the past.

This is not Autopilot jail, it’s the radar going on the blink and an immediate display of red hands to take over. TACC and AP then do not work for some time and cars are not displayed on the IP.
 
Had this a few times on separate days about 2 weeks ago. My wife said it seemed to be triggered in the same highway location, and then AP would be unavailable for a while. It was also accompanied by an ELDA failure as the car suddenly couldn't seem to find its lane on the highway and ping-ponged around and was trying to swerve into other lanes (not in AP) before it alerted and self-deactivated ELDA. I guess this could be consistent with radar or camera issues.

Unfortunately the SC didn't take it too seriously as they chalked it up to a cracked windshield we were getting replaced, but the AP freak-outs pre-dated the windshield crack. They did re-install the current software (24.4) we had at the time and the front camera gets recalibrated as part of the windshield replacement. There haven't been any instances since.
 
This is not Autopilot jail, it’s the radar going on the blink and an immediate display of red hands to take over. TACC and AP then do not work for some time and cars are not displayed on the IP.

There might be different reasons for AP failure.
Because if I get the message about “radar reduced visibility” because of heavy rain it still shows the surrounding cars on the IC of our Model X. But I can’t use TAC or AP while the radar is not usable.
AP disengaging while on AP is a different issue. It seems like the AP hardware is rebooting which takes a few minutes and then everything is back to normal. At least for me...
 
I was using Autopilot today for about 15-20 min when I suddenly got the alert that autosteer was unavailable and I was forced to take over. Has this happened to anyone else? Luckily it occurred when the car was going fairly straight. If autopilot had shutdown during a curve section of the freeway I might not have reacted in time. Really dangerous to be honest. Not sure why it did this. I couldn’t activate it again until my trip home. I didn’t ignore any nags to keep your hand on the wheel or anything.
Same alert msg. I have received for my recent use of AP and it could not be activated again until next trip. I have not tried to cancel the route and re tried it... Any way I also receive alert msg. about "contact service center if it is. ......"
 
This is a bug. I’ve experienced this in the past and worked with Tesla to correct it in one specific place that this would occur almost 2 out of 3 times. They resolved the issue in an update but it seems to have resurfaced (with less frequency). Immediately after the issue, autopilot and auto steering is unavailable as the AP computer resets and calibrates. During this time the car does not sense other cars in the environment and your car appears as the only car on the road.

You should file a bug report, open a case with Tesla and send video if you happened to record it.
Thank you! Interestingly your situation sounds like what might have happened to me. Just to clarify for those who think I was put in Autopilot Jail, I was definitely not. I am pretty familiar with the Autopilot nags and I never ignore them. I didn't get a blinking red alert stating Autosteer would be available for the rest of the drive. Which would be the case if I was put in AP Jail. It just popped up a small alert stating Autosteer is unavailable. I can't recall if there were any accompanying audio beeps but I believe there were? I think the alert is similar to the ones you get when you try to enable AP on roads which do not support it. However, this was on a freeway I've used AP on plenty of times (5 north) without any issues so it can't be the road. I did try reactivating AP a few more times but it still gave me the same Autosteer Unavailable message so I didn't attempt it anymore for the rest of the drive.

This definitely sounds like an error with the software. I wonder if I didn't react and takeover immediately, would AP have really disabled? It's scary to think AP could shutdown any time during your drive and your car could crash or go flying off the freeway.