Autopilot Utility

[ArtK]

Autopilot nags suck. Tesla needs to tweak feedback to be much lower. Here is what I did that will bring in the downvotes.

I bought this

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It blends in with the car. It makes the back of the wheel nicer to grip. It follows the contour but makes it thicker. Kind of hard to explain. It’s enough weight to remove the nags without hands. But I keep mine rested on it and don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Autopilot without a weight is absolute crap. There’s many variations of this weight. I bought this and love it. No affiliation with the product or seller. Lots of people selling the same thing. I would buy the cheapest.

Does this device eventually scar the steering wheel if eventually removed?

 

[whisperingshad]

I keep seeing all these glowing reviews of autopilot and how it reduces fatigue on long trips, and honestly I don't understand it. Maybe there's something I don't understand.

For me, I have to keep my hands on the wheel and make some sort of tangible input every ten seconds or so. One problem is I can't go more than 2 or 3 minutes and my 'tangible input' is too hard and it kicks autopilot off. But ignoring that, if I have to pay attention to what it's doing, and make some sort of intervention every ten seconds, it's more of a pain to ride herd on it than simply driving myself.

(One thing I'll say is I won't just cruise in the left lane, that's just wrong.)

Am I missing something? How do people go hours or whatever it is without changing lanes or over-jiggling the wheel or whatever?

Separate question, if you buy FSD or enhanced autopilot (not talking beta) does it relieve you of having to make a tangible input every ten seconds? Or do you still have to keep jiggling the wheel to let it know you're there?

Use to be until Fake media killed it and the NHTSA person that was appointed hates Musk so its the Nagging nanny now.

 

[bpobill]

Does this device eventually scar the steering wheel if eventually removed?

Nothing on mine in the last few weeks.

 

[DadRS99]

I get around this by using the volume control wheel to let it know I'm paying attention.


I use AP for about 80% of my driving in a small rural New Mexico town. Yes, I have to take over to pass, to turn onto a different street/road, at stop signs, and if I'm the first one at a traffic light. But I still love it. I tried going a week without it and I sorely missed it. It's really great in traffic "downtown".

There were several things I learned to make using it easier.

1) Using the volume control like I mentioned above.

2) I use light upward pressure on the right stalk to disengage AP and TACC. This frequently happens around the same time I'm using the left stalk to signal a turn.

3) Pressing the on-screen speedometer when AP is engaged will set the max speed to the current speed.

I'm mostly driving the same roads over and over. I learned how to mesh with AP, when to use it and when not, where it screws up, etc. like mtbwalt said, it takes care of the drudge work so I can pay more attention to what is going on around me.

Kyle Conner from Out of Spec Motoring also gives AP rave reviews. He does a ton of driving and says AP makes highway driving so much easier. He has reviewed almost all the other autopilot systems and says Tesla's is far superior.

It's probably not for everybody but I encourage you to give it a chance and try to figure out how to make it work for you most effectively.

How is the AP max speed figured out? Good tip to tap the speedometer when the AP max is too low.

 

[Fourdoor]

How is the AP max speed figured out? Good tip to tap the speedometer when the AP max is too low.

It is limited to 85 mph max on divided highways (90 mph for radar equipped cars) and on all other roads it is limited to 5 mph higher than what the system thinks the local speed limit is... if the built in nav map thinks that the rural highway you are on (with a 55 mph speed limit) has a speed limit of 25 mph it will limit your AP speed to 30 mph... this is infuriating to say the least In that situation (common in rural areas) I either drop out of AP and just use TACC, or I leave it in AP and override the speed control by pressing the accelerator.

Keith

 

[colea]

Agree with most of the comments that it can make driving generally less stressful minus one glaring issue, phantom braking. Went on a road trip last weekend and the car phantom braked at least 10 times in which I learned I had to immediately push the accelerator pedal to make the car stop from slamming on the brakes harder. I felt like I had to constantly monitor the system and was waiting for the cameras to see a large black spot on the road or register a false positive object. I still think the vision only system was a huge mistake by Tesla and still needs a lot of refinement. Running the latest software.

Yes, agree. Needing to keep jiggling the steering wheel and keep one's foot poised over the accelerator to tap out of phantom braking makes the whole driving experience not quite as stress-free as some claim.

 

[BitJam]

How is the AP max speed figured out? Good tip to tap the speedometer when the AP max is too low.

My problem is the car thinks the speed limit is 45 MPH when it's only 30 MPH and the safe speed is 25. I imagine it gets the speed limit data from maps. It happens on my way home when I leave a highway turning right onto a side road with a sharp corner. I'm going about 25 MPH when I re-engage AP. Then I just tap the speedometer on the screen instead of spinning the scroll wheel. I've never used this trick to increase the max speed. The scroll wheel is just fine for that. It's usually good for reducing the speed too. There is just this one place on my daily drive where using the scroll wheel is unsafe and inconvenient.

 

[BitJam]

It is limited to 85 mph max on divided highways (90 mph for radar equipped cars) and on all other roads it is limited to 5 mph higher than what the system thinks the local speed limit is...

I'm sorry to hear it doesn't work so well where you live.

Where I live (in a small rural New Mexico town) I don't need a divided highway to be allowed to put the max speed more than 5 mph over the limit. Here it seems to be "in town" versus "out of town" and will change in specific spots (that aren't actual town limits) without any changes in the road. IMO driving more the 5 mph over the limit in town is dangerous anyway (where I live).

There are a couple of places where I would like to set the max speed higher about 1000 feet earlier but overall it's pretty good. Another thing I've noticed is AP won't reduce the max speed even when it knows the speed limit is much lower and it thinks we're in town. Maybe it would eventually but I haven't pushed it to find out because that would be very unsafe. So for me the max speed ceiling is only sub-optimal in a few spots in one direction (heading out of "town").

I still wish I were able to teach the car what the speed limit is in certain places instead of it getting it wrong time after time. On the plus side it seems to be getting better at learning/accepting my preferred routes and it's been really good at lane keeping on unmarked roads. It's putting down blue lines where I can't see any markings.

 

[sleepydoc]

I like autopilot for those long stretches of highway driving. What I really dislike is that changing lanes disables it and then I have to re-enable it. It would be perfect if I could signal to change lanes, manually change lanes and have AP re-enable when the lane change is complete. The software is totally capable of doing this but I understand that this would chip away into the EAP and FSD sales so it will never happen.

I had a loaner with non-beta FSD last week and was able to try out the auto lane changing and it was OK but I'd prefer to to be able to do it myself - sometimes halfway through a lane change it would stop and return me back to the lane I was leaving. This might be because I have not figured out all the idiosyncrasies of EAP/FSD in the short time I had it but it did absolutely convince me that 6k EAP and 12k FSD (as of Q3 2022) is totally not worth it for my use cases here in NH. I might be convinced to spend 3k on EAP if I had to sit in traffic commuting every day or if I was doing a lot of highway trips.

Just turn on the turn signal (push it all the way down. If you push it half way you need to hold it down until it’s fully completed the lane change.)

I was just upgraded to the beta full autonomous driving. twice it has gone into a left hand turn lane instead of staying on the highway. It is jerky and quite frequently hard brakes for no reason. I have a model y. anyone else experiencing this?

Yes. This is FSD beta. Go check out one of the FSD beta threads.

Use to be until Fake media killed it and the NHTSA person that was appointed hates Musk so its the Nagging nanny now.

It wasn’t the ‘fake media’ - it was irresponsible idiots abusing the system and being stupid.

 

[Fourdoor]

I'm sorry to hear it doesn't work so well where you live.

Where I live (in a small rural New Mexico town) I don't need a divided highway to be allowed to put the max speed more than 5 mph over the limit. Here it seems to be "in town" versus "out of town" and will change in specific spots (that aren't actual town limits) without any changes in the road. IMO driving more the 5 mph over the limit in town is dangerous anyway (where I live).

There are a couple of places where I would like to set the max speed higher about 1000 feet earlier but overall it's pretty good. Another thing I've noticed is AP won't reduce the max speed even when it knows the speed limit is much lower and it thinks we're in town. Maybe it would eventually but I haven't pushed it to find out because that would be very unsafe. So for me the max speed ceiling is only sub-optimal in a few spots in one direction (heading out of "town").

I still wish I were able to teach the car what the speed limit is in certain places instead of it getting it wrong time after time. On the plus side it seems to be getting better at learning/accepting my preferred routes and it's been really good at lane keeping on unmarked roads. It's putting down blue lines where I can't see any markings.

It is my understanding that Tesla gets their speed limit data from Garmin, and you can become a Garmin contributor and update the Garmin maps with the correct speed limits... then you have to hope that Garmin implements your changes and that eventually Tesla will do a maps update that includes new speed limit data from Garmin.

Keith

 

[sleepydoc]

It is my understanding that Tesla gets their speed limit data from Garmin, and you can become a Garmin contributor and update the Garmin maps with the correct speed limits... then you have to hope that Garmin implements your changes and that eventually Tesla will do a maps update that includes new speed limit data from Garmin.

Keith

I don’t know if we know for sure - I’ve seen people say Tom Tom, Garmin, open street maps.org and google.

 

[Fourdoor]

I don’t know if we know for sure - I’ve seen people say Tom Tom, Garmin, open street maps.org and google.

Shoot, I was thinking Tom Tom when I said Garmin... they are both from the era before smart phones so they blended together in my mind.

Keith

 

[Wigan]

Well, I finally had a chance to taken another long trip and somehow everything came together to make it work great for me. It was probably just a combination of things just getting better.

1. Maybe the most important one is I learned there's just a little lag from an input that 'counts' to the warning going off. I think before I'd make an input, the light would keep blinking, so I'l make a stronger one that would kick it off and get Elon pissed at me. After being more patient I've found about the right among of input it takes and to wait and trust it.

2. I've found some comfortable positions I can use that make it almost effortless and just the weight of my grip is enough but not too much.

3. I've sort of just swallowed my pride and allowed myself more leeway to cruise in the left lane. I hate doing that, and I hate people that do it, but I'm a little more tolerant of letting myself cruise with the flow over there, if there is one. I still can't just sit over there like an idiot, but if there's a reasonable flow of traffic already I'll allow myself to flow along as part of it. And I'll still jump back to the right if there's a reasonable amount of open space over there.

And it made a HUGE difference.

So much so that on the way back I stopped in a Walmart and got a 1.5 pound ankle weight and used it as a nag eliminator, it was perfect. I actually feel safer with it because I can put more focus on the big picture instead of just station keeping because it has perfect 360 degree vision and never gets tired or distracted.

One thing I wish is that Elon would let pedal manipulation be a symptom of paying attention because I feel like it's more crude on speed control than lane control so I'm usually making little speed inputs ahead of when the car would do them to avoid sharp accelerations and decelerations.

Anyway, much, much better, more relaxing, and I feel even safer letting him keep it between the lines.

 

[sleepydoc]

on the way back I stopped in a Walmart and got a 1.5 pound ankle weight and used it as a nag eliminator, it was perfect. I actually feel safer with it because I can put more focus on the big picture instead of just station keeping because it has perfect 360 degree vision and never gets tired or distracted.

The potential problem with accepting the accelerator is that if you fall asleep your foot can easily push on the accelerator. Essentially there would be potentially dangerous false inputs.

I struggle with the weight - I’ve been sorely tempted to get one as well for the exact same reasons you state. Philosophically I have difficulty disabling safeguards. They’re nominally in place for a reason, but as we’ve all seen, flawed design seriously affects their efficacy and it’s to the point where you have to learn new habits to avoid the nags and it can actually distract you from driving. That’s a sign of a poorly designed system.

Tesla supposedly implemented attention awareness via gaze tracking but the only thing I’ve seen it used for is telling you to keep your eyes on the road when you’re trying to figure something out with the crappy interface. (Or when your eyes are already on the road.) Essentially it’s one more punishment without the reward. Why don’t they use that to avoid requiring the steering wheel nag? If it knows I’m looking at the road, why do I need to tug the wheel?

Years ago at a hospital here in Minneapolis a patient alarm kept going off unnecessarily and a nurse disabled it. Later that day a true alarm was missed and the patient suffered permanent brain damage. I try to keep that in mind when dealing with Tesla alarms. They’re annoying and flawed, but they’re in place because too many people have done stupid things. If someone kills themself by being stupid then I feel sorry for their family but I don’t worry but a 5000 pound battering ram can easily kill many other people if the driver isn’t on task. Those people shouldn’t have to worry.

 

[Fourdoor]

The potential problem with accepting the accelerator is that if you fall asleep your foot can easily push on the accelerator. Essentially there would be potentially dangerous false inputs.

I struggle with the weight - I’ve been sorely tempted to get one as well for the exact same reasons you state. Philosophically I have difficulty disabling safeguards. They’re nominally in place for a reason, but as we’ve all seen, flawed design seriously affects their efficacy and it’s to the point where you have to learn new habits to avoid the nags and it can actually distract you from driving. That’s a sign of a poorly designed system.

Tesla supposedly implemented attention awareness via gaze tracking but the only thing I’ve seen it used for is telling you to keep your eyes on the road when you’re trying to figure something out with the crappy interface. (Or when your eyes are already on the road.) Essentially it’s one more punishment without the reward. Why don’t they use that to avoid requiring the steering wheel nag? If it knows I’m looking at the road, why do I need to tug the wheel?

Years ago at a hospital here in Minneapolis a patient alarm kept going off unnecessarily and a nurse disabled it. Later that day a true alarm was missed and the patient suffered permanent brain damage. I try to keep that in mind when dealing with Tesla alarms. They’re annoying and flawed, but they’re in place because too many people have done stupid things. If someone kills themself by being stupid then I feel sorry for their family but I don’t worry but a 5000 pound battering ram can easily kill many other people if the driver isn’t on task. Those people shouldn’t have to worry.

To me the worst thing about the steering wheel nag is that it promotes BAD driving habits.

If you keep both hands firmly on the wheel at 10 and 2 or 9 and 3 you will constantly be getting nags... but if you do one hand at the 7 position just resting on the wheel, not even grasping it the car will for the most part leave you alone. Like most things, using a weight or not is about being responsible. Are you going to pay attention and keep situational awareness? Go ahead and use a weight! Are you going to drift off to sleep, or watch a Netflix movie on your phone? DON'T get the weight!

The sad part is, the irresponsible guy watching a movie on his phone, or drift off to sleep are just as likely to do so while resting their hand at the 7 position as they would if they used a weight

Keith

 

[BitJam]

If you keep both hands firmly on the wheel at 10 and 2 or 9 and 3 you will constantly be getting nags...

Use your left thumb to fidget with the volume control.

This is simple, easy, and mindless. There is no risk of disengagement and it's very effective at ensuring you are awake.

 

[GtiMart]

Yeah, I alternate between leaving a hand on the wheel and playing with either the volume or the speed every minute or so (one increment), to show the car I'm still there. Works okay.

 

[bpobill]

Buy a weight from eBay problem solved and keep your hand on the wheel. Mine never bugs me and if it does the weight will get rid of it after it blinks blue for a couple seconds. Best mod so far.

 

[RPM51]

I keep seeing all these glowing reviews of autopilot and how it reduces fatigue on long trips, and honestly I don't understand it. Maybe there's something I don't understand.

For me, I have to keep my hands on the wheel and make some sort of tangible input every ten seconds or so. One problem is I can't go more than 2 or 3 minutes and my 'tangible input' is too hard and it kicks autopilot off. But ignoring that, if I have to pay attention to what it's doing, and make some sort of intervention every ten seconds, it's more of a pain to ride herd on it than simply driving myself.

You are not wrong. For me, this system takes more effort to try to anticipate and stop the nagging, or anticipate braking for no reason that it creates more stress than actually just driving the car. Just completed a 1700 mi trip. Within the first 200 mi (on the freeway) with no traffic, bridges, shadows, or anything on the roads, the car slammed on the brakes at least 10 times scaring my family and causing my wife's drink to spill all over her. The car is brand new and the sensors are clean. Sections of slab concrete (not asphalt) freeway I just couldn't even use it anymore. It was too unpredictable. I don't know if it was scared of the small gaps between the poured slab sections or what. This was not a rural two-lane, this was 4 lane freeway, full sun, with hardly any other cars around. The autopilot system would not stop nagging no matter how I held the steering wheel, over many hours I tried every possible configuration of holding or pressure (including tips from here) and NOTHING worked for more than a minute or two. The only solution for me is manipulating the volume or speed every 15-20 seconds, which is maddening, along with constantly glancing over for the alert instead of paying better attention. I have thousands and thousands of real autopilot use in a jet, (which actually helps you maintain situational awareness by reducing your task load). The ultra-short nagging intervals in this system along with its known quirks make things worse IMO. Every time there is an exit or onramp lane the car veers over instead of staying put in the lane, obviously, this is a known problem. Having to put an excessive amount of physical torque into the wheel to sense you are paying attention is a poor design. I have driven an id.4 and it didn't do this. It had capacitive sensors to know my hands were gripping the wheel with slight pressure. No nagging.

I thought maybe with the new update using the interior camera it might be better and see that I was actually looking ahead. No. It was actually worse. Now in addition to the regularly scheduled nagging, when I look at the screen to do anything or see if I am getting warnings, it nags me even more than before. I just turned it off and reluctantly use TACC, which is also annoying with the unexpected hard braking and issues with lane changes where it slows down excessively when you move over to pass someone, then takes forever to speed back up blocking the flow of traffic (again you have to intervene and override it to avoid this). I like the car, however, not happy with this system AT ALL. My old dumb cruise was more reliable, predictable, and never scared anyone.

 

[Wigan]

The potential problem with accepting the accelerator is that if you fall asleep your foot can easily push on the accelerator. Essentially there would be potentially dangerous false inputs.

I struggle with the weight - I’ve been sorely tempted to get one as well for the exact same reasons you state. Philosophically I have difficulty disabling safeguards. They’re nominally in place for a reason, but as we’ve all seen, flawed design seriously affects their efficacy and it’s to the point where you have to learn new habits to avoid the nags and it can actually distract you from driving. That’s a sign of a poorly designed system.

Tesla supposedly implemented attention awareness via gaze tracking but the only thing I’ve seen it used for is telling you to keep your eyes on the road when you’re trying to figure something out with the crappy interface. (Or when your eyes are already on the road.) Essentially it’s one more punishment without the reward. Why don’t they use that to avoid requiring the steering wheel nag? If it knows I’m looking at the road, why do I need to tug the wheel?

Years ago at a hospital here in Minneapolis a patient alarm kept going off unnecessarily and a nurse disabled it. Later that day a true alarm was missed and the patient suffered permanent brain damage. I try to keep that in mind when dealing with Tesla alarms. They’re annoying and flawed, but they’re in place because too many people have done stupid things. If someone kills themself by being stupid then I feel sorry for their family but I don’t worry but a 5000 pound battering ram can easily kill many other people if the driver isn’t on task. Those people shouldn’t have to worry.

I can only say I'm going to be on task. If anything I feel like it's safer because I can focus on the big picture. I spent 24 years flying airplanes in the Air Force so staying focused isn't an issue.

Only you know yourself. If you're going to use it to dork around on your cellphone, you're right, bad idea. But if you're going to use it to simply relieve yourself of jiggling the wheel every 20 seconds you'll be a safer driver for it. You and I have the same experience flying airplanes and what you said is right, being relieved of the minutia lets you look at more important things. You should try it, with your flying background you understand how to stay focused and let it be a tool instead of a crutch.

I really wish they'd take a pedal input; I find the Tesla needs much more input with the pedal than the steering wheel when you're just cruising down the highway. I'd set the 'max speed' to about 50 on the interstate and constantly use the pedal to keep a proper positioning. IMO in autopilot your speed needs constant tweaking but it does a good job of keeping you between the lines.