Autosteer

[BobA9]

I find autosteer with FSD pretty useless. I’ve only had my Model X Plaid for a couple of months and still learning it’s features but autosteer and FSD are disappointing. Can someone explain when autosteer disengages on its own, why it’s disabled for the entire trip?

 

[mxnym]

Autosteer is a driving aid, essentially it is just lane keeping and TACC. You are still responsible for the driving, which requires paying attention. A Plaid Model X presumably has a camera for monitoring your face to ensure that you are doing paying attention. In that scenario, looking at the MCU for a few seconds will trigger a nag. Holding a cell phone in your hand will trigger a nag even more quickly. Once nagged, if you don't convince the system that you are paying attention in a period that it considers timely, you are kicked out of autopilot for the rest of the trip. This is casually called "autopilot jail." A whole lot of drivers are using autosteer in a whole lot of vehicles that have this feature (the cabin camera would be new to Plaid, but has been in 3 and Y for sometime) without regularly ending up in autopilot jail, so it seems likely that a better question could be "why are you paying so little attention if autosteer is so disappointing?" OTOH, if there is no cabin camera in the Plaid X (seems unlikely), then the issue could be that you aren't "keeping your hands otn the wheel." Unfortunately, "keeping your hands on the wheel" means applying a detectable level of steering torque against auto-steer. As I haven't driven a Tesla with the cabin camera, I can't tell you whether the nag triggered by the camera differs from the nag triggered by the lack of detectable user input steering torque, so the nag may be saying mentioning said steering force in either case.

If none of that fully explains your experience, one other possibility is that you are accelerating beyond the current 80 MPH limit tied to autosteer on vision-only versions of autopilot or 90 MPH on radar+vision versions of autopilot (I have no idea whether the Plaid X is using the radars it presumably has for autosteer). However, I'm not certain whether or not exceeding the limited speed will also lead to autopilot jail.

 

[BobA9]

Autosteer is a driving aid, essentially it is just lane keeping and TACC. You are still responsible for the driving, which requires paying attention. A Plaid Model X presumably has a camera for monitoring your face to ensure that you are doing paying attention. In that scenario, looking at the MCU for a few seconds will trigger a nag. Holding a cell phone in your hand will trigger a nag even more quickly. Once nagged, if you don't convince the system that you are paying attention in a period that it considers timely, you are kicked out of autopilot for the rest of the trip. This is casually called "autopilot jail." A whole lot of drivers are using autosteer in a whole lot of vehicles that have this feature (the cabin camera would be new to Plaid, but has been in 3 and Y for sometime) without regularly ending up in autopilot jail, so it seems likely that a better question could be "why are you paying so little attention if autosteer is so disappointing?" OTOH, if there is no cabin camera in the Plaid X (seems unlikely), then the issue could be that you aren't "keeping your hands otn the wheel." Unfortunately, "keeping your hands on the wheel" means applying a detectable level of steering torque against auto-steer. As I haven't driven a Tesla with the cabin camera, I can't tell you whether the nag triggered by the camera differs from the nag triggered by the lack of detectable user input steering torque, so the nag may be saying mentioning said steering force in either case.

If none of that fully explains your experience, one other possibility is that you are accelerating beyond the current 80 MPH limit tied to autosteer on vision-only versions of autopilot or 90 MPH on radar+vision versions of autopilot (I have no idea whether the Plaid X is using the radars it presumably has for autosteer). However, I'm not certain whether or not exceeding the limited speed will also lead to autopilot jail.

Thanks for the response. Don’t know if my car has an in cabin camera or not? How do I find out? Either way, I was paying attention, had my hands on the yoke and was not speeding yet the autosteer disengaged? I was on a well striped interstate highway, mid day, good weather with minimal traffic around me. BTW, I reported this to my local Tesla service and received a response that the road conditions were probably poor??? No explanation why autosteer was disabled for the remainder of the trip.

 

[ngng]

Thanks for the response. Don’t know if my car has an in cabin camera or not? How do I find out? Either way, I was paying attention, had my hands on the yoke and was not speeding yet the autosteer disengaged? I was on a well striped interstate highway, mid day, good weather with minimal traffic around me. BTW, I reported this to my local Tesla service and received a response that the road conditions were probably poor??? No explanation why autosteer was disabled for the remainder of the trip.

Did you see any flashing on the screen? If you are holding the wheel with AP engaged and tap the brake or overpower the AP system, it will disengage. If you are not doing anything and the screen starts flashing white, the system is going to disengage soon. Once the screen flashes red, disengagement is imminent. Did you see any flashes, or did you manually disengage AP? Or, was something else happening?

 

[ngng]

Also, you can usually determine what the car is "seeing" by looking at the center screen. Do you see solid blue lines? If not, AP does not see the lane edges.

 

[DCGOO]

Thanks for the response. Don’t know if my car has an in cabin camera or not? How do I find out? Either way, I was paying attention, had my hands on the yoke and was not speeding yet the autosteer disengaged? I was on a well striped interstate highway, mid day, good weather with minimal traffic around me. BTW, I reported this to my local Tesla service and received a response that the road conditions were probably poor??? No explanation why autosteer was disabled for the remainder of the trip.

Cabin cameras are in all Model 3, Model Y and refreshed X/S. Legacy X or S do not have a cabin camera.

Deteriorating weather conditions should not place you in auto-pilot jail, although it probably won’t be available until conditions improve. If you ever blow by 80 mph with FSD in operation, go directly to jail. The trick is to disable autopilot BEFORE exceeding 80.

 

[mxnym]

Thanks for the response. Don’t know if my car has an in cabin camera or not? How do I find out? Either way, I was paying attention, had my hands on the yoke and was not speeding yet the autosteer disengaged? I was on a well striped interstate highway, mid day, good weather with minimal traffic around me. BTW, I reported this to my local Tesla service and received a response that the road conditions were probably poor??? No explanation why autosteer was disabled for the remainder of the trip.

The 80 MPH limit isn't about speeding, it's a programmed limit as they improve the vision-only system. The limit was originally 75 MPH when 3 and Y first went vision only, and it is possible that the programmed limit in the new X is initially lower as well, but that seems unlikely. In order to have a better idea what is happening, it might be helpful to know which message(s) or image(s) popped up on the IC at disengagement and/or upon subsequent attempts to re-engage. For instance, if it said "features may be restored on next drive" the word may could be telling (I wouldn't know for sure, as I've never been in autopilot jail). If there is any sort of problem, there should also be a way to see problem errors even if they aren't showing on the IC. For instance, on my legacy X, I sometimes see a ! in a triangle on the MCU, and tapping it will tell me that my dashcam USB is too slow or my wiper fluid is low. I'm not sure where you'd find that button on a Plaid MCU, but I suspect you could at least find a historical listing in the service section of the menu.

 

[Bigriver]

Can someone explain when autosteer disengages on its own, why it’s disabled for the entire trip?

With just a few pieces of information, none of us can assess for sure what is occurring for you (once or multiple times?) My guess is that you are not applying enough of a slight torque pressure to the steering wheel (or yoke in your case). The screen right in front of you will flash a bit, I believe the colors change as it tries to get your attention. If it goes through this too many times during a drive, that is one way that you end up in autopilot jail until the car is put in park and started again. It is kind of subtle, and I didn’t recognize the situation initially and ended up in autopilot jail a few times as a new owner.

There is also the interior camera that others have seemed to focus on more. I don’t know it’s tolerance, but it doesn’t want you looking away from the road. I actually got pinged on it quite a bit on a recent trip, but it wasn’t enough to put me in time out. So my experience is that it is pretty tolerant.

The steering wheel nags and camera monitoring are 2 separate things with different notifications. The steering wheel nags are what I described above and the camera ping is a very fast notification that appears and disappears. It is in red text, but I couldn’t tell you what it says because it disappears so fast.

 

[BobA9]

I’ve noticed a few warnings about steering wheel (Yoke) pressure and increased pressure so this was not the reason for the disengagement. I did notice something flash in red but have no idea what it displayed? There should be a way to display all messages displayed during previous trips.

 

[ShawnA]

Hi @BobA9 ,

From what you have written you may be having a common failure...
You say to increase steering wheel "pressure" or squeezing the wheel tighter.
This is not what the car wants - It wants you to (micro) turn the wheel...

Barely budge the yoke toward the side of the road
or toward the center of the road
and you should eliminate this problem...
The car senses you turning the wheel not squeezing the wheel.

Good luck,

Shawn

PS - Too see any messages: Go to Service> Touch notifications.
Do this before putting the car in park or leaving the car.

 

[cadreeeem]

Why do other car manufacturer's lane keeping systems not require hands on the steering wheel and nudging it occasionally but Tesla does? I rented a Kia Sportage recently and it did not nag me at all, even with my hands off the wheel for many miles. Also, if I moved the steering wheel enough to disengage, the lane keeper would automatically re-engage without me intervening. It actually works better than the autosteer in my Model 3!

 

[Tam]

Why do other car manufacturer's lane keeping systems not require hands on the steering wheel and nudging it occasionally but Tesla does? I rented a Kia Sportage recently and it did not nag me at all, even with my hands off the wheel for many miles. Also, if I moved the steering wheel enough to disengage, the lane keeper would automatically re-engage without me intervening. It actually works better than the autosteer in my Model 3!

They have had a long term vision while Tesla thought cameraless in the cabin would be enough.

Tesla is now playing catch up by placing cabin cameras. The S and X didn't have any until last year.

Someone needs to write some software codes to enable automatic re-engaging and you believe that Tesla could?

 

[dannycamps]

I’ve noticed a few warnings about steering wheel (Yoke) pressure and increased pressure so this was not the reason for the disengagement. I did notice something flash in red but have no idea what it displayed? There should be a way to display all messages displayed during previous trips.

It's not pressure you need to apply but rather torque. When I first got my Tesla, I would squeeze the wheel as hard as I could thinking that is what you needed to do (the on-screen instructions are not super clear). What you need to do is apply a slight turn to the wheel.

I find when I drive, I keep my hand on the lower spoke of the wheel and just apply a slight turn and it works well.