I just took delivery of a M3 LR AWD in March after selling my 2016 Model S AP1. I did notice right away that AS is more stable and less nervous than AP1. It tends to stay centered in the lane better and follows curves in the mountains better where AP1 would just give up and disconnect. However, TACC has been a disaster with this car. The AP1 version worked mostly well but would always brake when a car far ahead turned off and into a turn lane. The current TACC is so nervous with un-needed braking that my wife is asking me to keep it off. It seems to brake check when:
Road ahead curves up at the bottom of a hill - even a shallow rise
In a curve where there are cars in other lanes close ahead - this happens all the time
Cars ahead brake regardless of how far away they are
Cars move into a turn lane and slow down - again regardless of how far away they are
I'm not too worried about being rear ended. If someone is following that close then it's their fault. And so far the braking has never been at full stopping power. But still ... In it's current iteration it is useless for me. I use cruise control all the time so this is a big problem for me. I would take a "dumb" cruise control at this point just to have something that works.
The following distance is too long even set to 1. With this engaged cars are constantly pulling in front of us in heavy traffic. Yes, people follow too closely. But with a radar and cameras, I can't believe that the system couldn't stop the car before a collision without being 4-5 car lengths behind even at 75 mph. This has always been the case with AP1 and this version.
I eagerly activated "Navigate on Cruise" when I received the update. This is mostly a gimmick and finally today I de-activated it because I have found that it serves no purpose. I end up cancelling lane changes as often as allowing them because I can see up ahead that the lane chosen has a much slower car in the lane meaning that it will have to change lanes again very soon. Also, even though I keep my hands on the wheel, this function checks to make sure you have your hands on the wheel before allowing lane changes. But it is looking for torque on the wheel and cannot tell that my hands are there but not pulling. This caused a lot of consternation for a long time until I read in the release notes that this is what it is doing. And don't keep pulling too hard. I was in a turn with some torque on the wheel and after it turned the torque increased too much so that it thought I was trying to dis-engage it, so it dis-engaged! Wife not happy with unexpected big swerve in the middle of a turn.
I love the car, but it is just too glitchy. Tesla needs to do a far better job of testing updates before releasing.
As far as FSD, I don't believe too many people if indeed anyone have the FSD computer installed yet. So extrapolating from AP2 performance is probably not appropriate. As far as cameras exclusively vs cameras with Lidar keep in mind that Lidar has limitations. Apparently not effective in heavy downpour or fog and prone to errors with high sun angles and shallow reflections. And human drivers do a reasonable job of driving with essentially nothing more than two eyes and a brain. I believe that eventually cameras and computers alone will be enough. And don't forget that Tesla already as a Neural Network of 2 million cars that have allowed Tesla to make their system learn from billions of miles driven. No other Self Driving company or government organization can claim anything close to that. The only experts on Tesla's FSD capability work for Tesla.
