Autopilot thoughts

[NerdUno]

My Model S has less than 1,000 miles and the Autopilot is sometimes crazy. You would think someone's drunk uncle is behind the wheel. It sometimes just veers off for no reason. I believe it may still be calibrating?

Mine's been "calibrating" for more than a year. Drunk uncle still shows up periodically. If you ever had a horse that shied away from weird objects such as butterflies, you'll feel right at home.

 

[Sawyer8888]

I have had autosteer just twitch off to the side for no reason I can see. It's very rare but it has happened 3-4 times.

I had AP switch off for the remainder of my commute last week without prior warning, and I was forced to take over immediately. It was a clear day, light highway traffic, and the car and sensors were clean. I was unable to turn AP back on until I parked. That is the 2nd time that's happened in 17K miles. For the 30 minutes of AP driving leading up to that, I moved the wheel every time I was prompted.

AP works well for lane-keeping on highways. Like @mdk1a said, I too believe it operates within 90% of its intended use on the highway. That extra 10%? Seems like the hurdles are quite high at the moment.

I've experienced near misses in stop-and-go traffic due to slowly merging vehicles directly in front of me, usually when I am barely moving - the sensors/cameras don't recognize those cars until the very last moment, after the entire car has already moved into the lane. At least the 90% effectiveness of AP on the highway makes my nearly 2-hour daily roundtrips (almost all highway) more comfortable.

For all other types of driving, such as non-highway city roads, AP is 50% at best IMO. Tesla says it shouldn't even be used on city streets:

From Tesla Support on 01/31/18...

In regards to auto pilot no maintaining lanes through intersections please remember Auto pilot is still in Beta and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. It should not be used on city streets.

We appreciate your input! please feel free to contact us directly via phone for further questions or concerns.

Please feel free to contact Customer Support 24/7 at [email protected] or by phone at 1-877-79-TESLA (83752).​

 

[NerdUno]

From Tesla Support on 01/31/18...

In regards to auto pilot no maintaining lanes through intersections please remember Auto pilot is still in Beta and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. It should not be used on city streets.

Sounds just like Elon's sales pitch, doesn't it?

NOT!

 

[The Duke]

We might classify AP in three stages. Driver supervision, driver inattentive (or distracted) and driver not needed. We are at the first most of the time, the second some of the time and the third under perfect conditions. The percentage of time in each category will change back and forth as AP is developed with hit and miss changes. But overall we are headed to driver not needed.

 

[Sawyer8888]

The percentage of time

Good analysis. The percentage of time? It's a good thing we're a patient and understanding group and our "3-6 months" is now calibrated accordingly.

 

[JayyyDeee]

I think reality is somewhere in the middle. Autopilot does allow you to relax a little and relieves stress. You do still need to be paying attention, however I don’t think you need to be keyed up and ready to take over in a split second. In general, the things that autopilot has issues with don’t come up suddenly. It has problems in construction when the lane lines don’t always make sense, but you can see construction coming up and take over or pay more attention while you are going through it. It has problems when a lane is ending, but again, as long as you are paying a minimal amount of attention to the driving you should be able to see the lane ending and take over or switch out of that lane. It has problems when traffic (or a fire truck) is stopped ahead, but again, if you’re actually looking out the windshield and not reading text messages on your phone you will see the traffic coming up with plenty of time to stop manually.

I think all of the highly publicized accidents involving autopilot were caused by someone not paying any attention at all... not by someone who happened to look away for a second or two.

I 100% disagree with you not being ready to take over any second will lead to you getting into an accident when autopilot fails.

 

[cinqg]

If you hold down the Verbal command button and hold it the whole time and start with "Bug Report" i beliveve it sends it directly to Tesla if you do it right after the autosteer goes buggy at the same place unexpectedly so that is the way to report the weird behavior.

 

[BigD0g]

No, it doesn’t send directly to Tesla anymore they changed it. It takes the screenshots and data and stores it so they can pull it. However you need to call and ask them to pull your bug report.

 

[NerdUno]

Of course, Tesla has never documented any of this... true to form.

 

[NickFie]

My friend & I drove my wife's S 100D from Chicago to Philadelphia the day after Delivery. He flies private planes, after about 30 minutes he explained that AP2 seems like "George" - pilots' term for the aircraft autopilot. It generally handles the mechanics - speed, lane position, separation - freeing the driver to pay attention to the larger context.

A few days ago, found a gap in the parking algorithm. The car had backed in, was pulling up to center itself. A pedestrian walked in front of the car. The car seemed focused only on position in the parking spot, detected the pedestrian but didn't react. I had to jam on the brakes.

No illusions that I can disregard the road. Benefits:
- It keeps the car on course when I look away from the road.
- Highway driving is much less stressful since so much of the mechanics are handled well.

And it's still in development. Three months and one major update since purchase, the lane positioning algorithm is better at detecting/disregarding right exits, car seems to decelerate further from stopped traffic than at first.

The display shows what the car "sees", then I try to infer the algorithms behind its decisions. Helps me predict situations where it will be overwhelmed or misguided.

 

[BigD0g]

There’s also this little complication.... Hello, rear radar :-)