I purchased my first Tesla 5 days ago, and took it on a 1,500 mile road trip the next day. I've wanted a Tesla since the early rumors of the original Roadster, so this was a grand occasion. Here are some of my observations:
The manual driving experience is terrific: Smooth, more-than-ample power coupled with surprisingly good handling. Love it!
But the automation? Oh, my. This car is buggy, bordering on dangerous. Over the course of the 1,500 miles, I had probably 20 random braking events using basic cruise control. For most of them, I couldn't come up with any plausible guess as to why the brakes came on hard for 2-3 seconds, then resumed normal cruising, as if to say, "Oops, sorry dude, my bad." But I quickly learned not to use Autopilot-cruise when in anything more than very light traffic. Slamming on the brakes is just asking for trouble.
Two days later, Autopilot decided my wipers had to be on. In this case it was a cloudless summer evening and the sun was low in the sky, so lighting conditions were odd. It took awhile to figure out why the wipers were coming on (intermittent mode), but we narrowed it down. Every time we engaged Autopilot, the wipers would take nicely timed swipes across freshly splatted bugs, dust - everything but rain. I stopped for a bit and cleaned the windshield (and cameras) of all the freshly smeared bug guts, but it didn't help. The wipers still came on every time.
That same evening, after sunset, the automatic headlights turned on for the first time. Cool! After about 10 seconds, they switched to high beams, even though there was a car about 100 feet ahead. I manually turned off the high beams. Later I decided to try full Autosteer to see how it behaved at dusk. The moment I engaged it, the headlights switched to high beams, totally oblivious to the fact that there were cars ahead and cars approaching me. I canceled it quick.
At one point on the trip the screen went black and apparently rebooted. Thankfully I could drive just fine during the blackout, but I have to admit I was fearing all hell was about to break loose.
Thing is, Tesla is supposed to be in the forefront of automatic driving systems, yet the 2019 car I traded in (rhymes with Who Are You) didn't have these problems. Sure, it was underpowered and doesn't offer FSD or fart, but what it does, it does well. Its adaptive cruise control works smoothly and reliably, and never comes rushing up on somebody's bumper before it decelerates. Its automatic headlights dim exactly when you'd do it yourself, and go back to bright only when the coast is clear.
More importantly, shouldn't these the most-basic functions be foolproof before you starting layering on the greater complexities of full self driving?
Anyway, I like my new Tesla. It drives great (manually) and does some cool things. But I don't love it. There are fundamental functions I'm afraid to use, and I'm not so sure I would buy this car again.
The manual driving experience is terrific: Smooth, more-than-ample power coupled with surprisingly good handling. Love it!
But the automation? Oh, my. This car is buggy, bordering on dangerous. Over the course of the 1,500 miles, I had probably 20 random braking events using basic cruise control. For most of them, I couldn't come up with any plausible guess as to why the brakes came on hard for 2-3 seconds, then resumed normal cruising, as if to say, "Oops, sorry dude, my bad." But I quickly learned not to use Autopilot-cruise when in anything more than very light traffic. Slamming on the brakes is just asking for trouble.
Two days later, Autopilot decided my wipers had to be on. In this case it was a cloudless summer evening and the sun was low in the sky, so lighting conditions were odd. It took awhile to figure out why the wipers were coming on (intermittent mode), but we narrowed it down. Every time we engaged Autopilot, the wipers would take nicely timed swipes across freshly splatted bugs, dust - everything but rain. I stopped for a bit and cleaned the windshield (and cameras) of all the freshly smeared bug guts, but it didn't help. The wipers still came on every time.
That same evening, after sunset, the automatic headlights turned on for the first time. Cool! After about 10 seconds, they switched to high beams, even though there was a car about 100 feet ahead. I manually turned off the high beams. Later I decided to try full Autosteer to see how it behaved at dusk. The moment I engaged it, the headlights switched to high beams, totally oblivious to the fact that there were cars ahead and cars approaching me. I canceled it quick.
At one point on the trip the screen went black and apparently rebooted. Thankfully I could drive just fine during the blackout, but I have to admit I was fearing all hell was about to break loose.
Thing is, Tesla is supposed to be in the forefront of automatic driving systems, yet the 2019 car I traded in (rhymes with Who Are You) didn't have these problems. Sure, it was underpowered and doesn't offer FSD or fart, but what it does, it does well. Its adaptive cruise control works smoothly and reliably, and never comes rushing up on somebody's bumper before it decelerates. Its automatic headlights dim exactly when you'd do it yourself, and go back to bright only when the coast is clear.
More importantly, shouldn't these the most-basic functions be foolproof before you starting layering on the greater complexities of full self driving?
Anyway, I like my new Tesla. It drives great (manually) and does some cool things. But I don't love it. There are fundamental functions I'm afraid to use, and I'm not so sure I would buy this car again.
