Cruise control / Auto Pilot is Garbage

[WADan]

I just had a rental car in Texas. I drove about 1000 miles. It was the latest GEN Toyota Camry. It had their latest suite of adaptive cruise, lane change, emergency braking, etc. In the 1000 miles that I drove, all kinds a very traffic conditions, in Dallas and Houston, I never had a single issue of phantom braking. No false warnings of anything.

It makes me realize how terrible those features work on my MYLR. I was cringing driving the Camry at first every time I went through a tree shaded area where my MY would have issues discerning things using vision only. I was anticipating having to give it throttle so I wouldn't be rear-ended like when my MY would hit the brakes because it was spooked by apparently a shadow.

I'd rather have something simpler that consistently works than supposedly a better system with a lot of issues. My experience, in my areas and use cases, shows that it is more of a beta product than something ready for production. If my wife had been driving the car, she wouldn't have reacted like I did when the MY braked hard and we would have been rear ended a few times for sure.

I love a lot of things about my car but this is an area where it is clearly deficient. Maybe it is because the vision only isn't up to snuff yet. i don't recall having all these issues on the demo cars I drove (on the same roads) that had radar enabled as well.

THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCE. I think having a different perspective like this helps to make realistic assessment of our own product. Being aware of strength and weakness helps us owners to demand/choose better products. Being a blind fanboy (for example, refusing to see deficiencies and telling people to buy a different one) is not particularly helpful.

(BTW, I love my MYLR, and would buy it again).

 

[WhiteWi]

Fanboy or not fanboy, Out of 15k miles we had 10 unexpected slow downs that never caused accident and I am pretty sure none exist to this day. Talking about making a big deal out of nothing. If you want dumb safety system buy other brand. If Elon listened to what people want he would have never built Electric car.

 

[Pictreed]

THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR EXPERIENCE. I think having a different perspective like this helps to make realistic assessment of our own product. Being aware of strength and weakness helps us owners to demand/choose better products. Being a blind fanboy (for example, refusing to see deficiencies and telling people to buy a different one) is not particularly helpful.

(BTW, I love my MYLR, and would buy it again).

Well put. I love my MYLR and would buy it again but the ghost braking is a horrible issue. TESLA, PLEASE REMOVE AUTO BRAKING FROM CRUISE CONTROL and just leave it on Autopilot so at least one of them is problem free.
I have noticed on large freeways it doesn't have too many issues but on single road highways it stops at shadows more times than the Sanderson Sisters in Salem because it thinks it's a black river of death (Hocus Pocus reference LOL).

 

[DayTrippin]

Fanboy or not fanboy, Out of 15k miles we had 10 unexpected slow downs that never caused accident and I am pretty sure none exist to this day. Talking about making a big deal out of nothing. If you want dumb safety system buy other brand. If Elon listened to what people want he would have never built Electric car.

I had 6 unexpected slowdowns on one trip across Florida towing a trailer. Most of them were basically slam on the brakes so as not to hit anything type of emergency braking. This was just with TACC. After the first one happened, I made sure my foot was over the accelerator pedal from then on.

Tech is great when it works. When it doesn't it can cause more issues than it is worth. Glad your experience is better than mine. I drove my RDX with adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and all the Acura safety features and only had what I'd call phantom braking events a total of 3 times in 20k+ miles.

I towed the exact same trailer setup, on the exact same roads, with my RDX where I had so 6 phantom braking events with my MYLR. Not a single one with my RDX. I was driving at the same time of day, same conditions, same speeds, everything about the same as you could get for condition and not a single phantom braking even with my Acura.

Tesla really needs to step up their game in this area. This is basic blocking and tackling items that should be pretty well worked out. When they had the radar shortage and went to vision only is when I think they blew it. They weren't ready to go vision only and it shows.

 

[OB1Kenobi]

I've experienced several phantom braking events in my first 2 weeks of ownership. Living in Colorado, there are lots of hills and mountains around, and TACC certainly seems to have problems when cresting the tops of hills. I get it, it's often hard to see the road very far in front of you when that happens, but still seems like something the car should not suddenly slow down aggressively for. In addition, it has slowed suddenly multiple times on high speed 2 lane roads, of which we have a lot of. Typically it's when you are in a right-hand curve with no visible car in front of you, then an oncoming car in the opposite lane approaches and TACC gets scared, thinking the car may be in your lane. I've also seen it slow down during the day at underpasses as others have mentioned.

One highway near us that circles around Denver has two spots where TACC will drop the speed from whatever you have set down to 50 MPH suddenly. It happens in both directions, in the same 2 places, every time. The same thing happened to me during my test drive back in June. The sales agent said what others here have said, "Bad mapping data." OK, fine. 5 months later it still has the same bad mapping data? Overall I'd say the TACC functionality is the biggest letdown in the car. I still use it, it generally did a good job on my 900 mile road trip home, but it's hard to trust completely when it seems to freak out far too much for comfort.

 

[WhiteWi]

All this outrage and Tesla
still selling like a hot cakes who would have thought. Care to explain?

 

[DayTrippin]

All this outrage and Tesla
still selling like a hot cakes who would have thought. Care to explain?

Does yours have radar or is it vision only? They aren't buying it because of the TACC or AP that is for damn sure. Not to mention, you don't find about some of these things until after you buy or maybe read it on a forum. Not a wit of it in the road tests.

I look at everything and assess the overall value as part of my purchasing decision. The car is great in other areas and sucks in these. I was caught in the cutover from radar + vision to vision. If I had known how bad it would be compared to the demo cars with radar, it might have shifted my buying decision.

There were the typical murky Elon promises that it will be up to par, even better, than the radar + vision. For me, I don't really trust TACC or AP that much now. I can recommend a lot of other things about the car than this. I'd rather have just dumb basic cruise control than TACC in its current form.

I thought people were joking that their cars were trying to kill them. I can now honestly see how they could think that.

@OB1Kenobi - I have some of these same braking issues. It drops from 70 mph to 50 mph on this one stretch of road every time. I don't think the speed was ever 50 mph there. I've written Tesla about it and still nothing.

 

[OB1Kenobi]

I'd rather have just dumb basic cruise control than TACC in its current form.

I thought people were joking that their cars were trying to kill them. I can now honestly see how they could think that.

Likewise, if the traffic aware portion could be disabled in the settings I would happily do so and just use basic cruise until they sort things out better.

 

[WhiteWi]

Does yours have radar or is it vision only? They aren't buying it because of the TACC or AP that is for damn sure. Not to mention, you don't find about some of these things until after you buy or maybe read it on a forum. Not a wit of it in the road tests.

I look at everything and assess the overall value as part of my purchasing decision. The car is great in other areas and sucks in these. I was caught in the cutover from radar + vision to vision. If I had known how bad it would be compared to the demo cars with radar, it might have shifted my buying decision.

There were the typical murky Elon promises that it will be up to par, even better, than the radar + vision. For me, I don't really trust TACC or AP that much now. I can recommend a lot of other things about the car than this. I'd rather have just dumb basic cruise control than TACC in its current form.

I thought people were joking that their cars were trying to kill them. I can now honestly see how they could think that.

@OB1Kenobi - I have some of these same braking issues. It drops from 70 mph to 50 mph on this one stretch of road every time. I don't think the speed was ever 50 mph there. I've written Tesla about it and still nothing.

I have radar based Tesla. Also placed order for vision only Model Y. And have older S with AP1. I know the limits and I like the system, works better than others if you count auto steering in to the Equation.

 

[DayTrippin]

Wait until you get your MY with vision only and then let's talk when we are on the same exact shitty AP platform.

Autosteering is only relaible on the highway. I can't use it while towing anyway as I have the factory hitch which disable AP. I do however still get the "benefit" of phantom braking on both the backroads and highways both.

The most unexplainable recent event was coming north on I-95 just south of St. Augustine, FL. A pretty steep overpass and while towing my jetkskis the MY decides to brake hard just at the base of the upward slope of the overpass. Thankfully it was just after an exit so there weren't too many people behind me or close to me. I have no idea what spooked it then. Maybe because it was in October and close to Halloween. I have learned to always cover the accelerator now if there is anyone remotely close behind me and I am using TACC or AP. Could truly be an awesome feature if it worked as intended or like all the demo cars I drove did.

It might go a week or two with no issues, lulling me into a false sense of complacency, then it strikes (phantom braking) with no warning. That pretty much sums up my experience with TACC and AP the last few months. I may go old school like my grandpa did before cruise control and just put a brick on the accelerator...

 

[mycroftxxx]

All this outrage and Tesla
still selling like a hot cakes who would have thought. Care to explain?

It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.

I have two Teslas, a 3 and a Y, like the cars a lot, well enough that I no longer have an ICE car. But there are things I don’t care for, such as autosteer- ok, I can easily live without that, so I don’t use it (except occasionally to remind myself of why I don’t like it ). Then there’s no SXM - well, streaming on my phone is nowhere as convenient as having it built in to the infotainment system, but it’s a tolerable workaround. Then there’s phantom braking, which sucks - fortunately it doesn’t happen very often to me, but it’s definitely a real phenomenon; my Y is a radar car, and the 3 is a vision car, and they both experience it. If Tesla gave me the option to have a normal cruise control sans “traffic aware”, I’d do it immediately though; as is, I keep my foot near the accelerator just in case.

Nevertheless, I like both cars a lot and have no desire to get rid of them - in fact, I bought the 3 knowing what the downsides were for me, and have no regrets. But that doesn’t eliminate the negatives, it just means they are tolerable for me at this time; and what I consider negatives may be shared by others, or be irrelevant to them. I’m not outraged at all, but a few years hence, when the BEV competitive landscape has further evolved, I may find one that ticks all my must-have boxes with fewer negatives, and Tesla may lose me as a customer. Still no outrage though, just a consumer freely making a choice that meets my needs and wants. Ain’t it grand?

 

[WhiteWi]

I understand that this forums mostly for venting. Carry on.

 

[Steel28]

I have never seen such fan boys as White Wi lmao.

 

[bobbyjae]

I have had my MY for about 2 weeks and am in no rush to test out AP until these basic issues are resolved. Hope it is soon...

 

[WhiteWi]

I have had my MY for about 2 weeks and am in no rush to test out AP until these basic issues are resolved. Hope it is soon...

From Tesla support:Trailer Mode must always be active when towing a trailer. Some Autopilot features such as Autopark and Autosteer, as well as rear parking sensor functionality, may not be available when Trailer Mode is enabled.

 

[mjwojtukiewicz]

Lol. Elitist first world problems. Guess turning your neck is below you fine sir.

I turn my neck. People and especially cars come flying out of nowhere. My wife's Lexus does it. And I am hardly an elitist. 10K for software and it can't tell you when some jerk comes flying past you in a parking lot?

 

[WhiteWi]

I turn my neck. People and especially cars come flying out of nowhere. My wife's Lexus does it. And I am hardly an elitist. 10K for software and it can't tell you when some jerk comes flying past you in a parking lot?

If you don’t like Tesla tech don’t buy Tesla. Pretty simple to me.

 

[jsight]

All this outrage and Tesla
still selling like a hot cakes who would have thought. Care to explain?

Outside of owners most don't know about it. The media reports all sorts of absurd problems with AP that aren't real but underreports the few that are real.

Also, despite this specific problem most of us really love the cars. Even AP is still worth it, just not as good as it could and hopefully will be.

 

[mjwojtukiewicz]

If you don’t like Tesla tech don’t buy Tesla. Pretty simple to me.

You are a very cynical person. I bought Tesla because I believe in EVs ( I've owned a 2002, 2007, 2010, 2017 Prius). I also own 75 shares of Tesla stock. My basic premise is this. Alot of the technlogy that is BASIC to many ICE cars is lacking in the Tesla. And if he wants 10K for basically code it is not asking alot for having the features these other cars have built into the basic price. I read about a year ago someone tweeted Elon to have an alert before opening the driver's side door if a bicycle approaches. He said good idea. It's a SAFETY feature. Unless the car can anticipate EVERY action it will never be autonomous.

 

[Jigglypuff]

A car cannot anticipate everything, just like a person cannot. The goal is to get the car safer than people all without making major tradeoffs. Autopilot and FSD are NOT safer than normal people right now, they drive much slower overall, and the come with a lot of dangerous freakouts. Competing following cruise control systems are safer. Competing stay in lane systems work better with the driver. The media in general does treat Tesla like their system works well, but it works terribly. They're far behind in usefulness, but far ahead in marketing and pushing out unsafe features. Autosteer is nothing but a dangerous toy.