Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Cruise Control Confusion

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
To start I have absolutely no problems with the cruise control, except for the lack of a resume function. Really, why would that not be included? But I digress. I should mention that our Tesla is a 2021 MS LR
Whenever my wife drives she can not get cruise control to engage. I even tried pressing the scroll wheel from the passenger seat thinking somehow she was double tapping or pressing too long but no matter what we tried the cruise would not engage and the yolk icon, in tan not gray, would show up momentarily by the speed indicators. The Autosteer is set on double click. I even tried barely touching the yolk while driving to see whether that light touch might be causing the computer to fail to allow cruise control. Still worked just fine for me. A real stretch but maybe she's too short for the camera to notice. Do the computers register weight in the seat? She's small but she is still over 100 pounds. Just kidding about the weight thing.
On the return trip after she had these problems while I was along, I drove and had none. Worked perfect.
Oh, and by the way what a change in the low speed regen! Two comments. I am definitely going to use the brakes much less and I wonder how long it will be before I'm stopped for reckless driving after taking my foot off the accelerator "way too late" and smoothly slow to a stop.
 
OK, 93 views so far and not one comment or solution to my problem! Am I to believe that you are just too polite to tell me what I missed or do each and everyone of you not know about the fix which, I was almost embarrassed to find out, is that each driver has to designate one click or 2 for their Autosteer function in order to enable the cruise when they are driving. I had no idea that was included in the driver profiles. I say "almost" embarrassed because I don't remember seeing that in the owner's manual. I will check but just in case hopefully someone can provide us with a complete list of all of the functions covered by driver profiles.
We have the friendly, professional and extremely helpful staff at the Toledo, Ohio service center to thank for helping us with this problem. We went in to get our yoke air bag replaced and, finally, get our trunk floor cover and came away with nothing but positive things to say about our experience. One of the service people even went so far as to do some research and came up with what he felt was possibly a pretty accurate figure for the torque output of our S's motors, something I have been trying to ascertain for at least 4 months from multiple Tesla sources.
Hopefully, soon, the rest of Tesla's service and sales group will start deserving compliments like this on a regular basis. Please!
 
I am definitely going to use the brakes much less and I wonder how long it will be before I'm stopped for reckless driving after taking my foot off the accelerator "way too late" and smoothly slow to a stop.
You are supposed to feather the throttle, not remove your foot from the accelerator unless you need everything regen has to offer and then some by applying the brakes. This puts you in complete control of how fast or how slow you want to come to a stop. The accelerator works just like a normal accelerator on an ice car, the only difference it it also works in reverse when letting off except now controls the braking forces as opposed to acceleration. Feather, feather, feather. ;)

As for items being stored in profiles, there is a bunch of stuff. Steering, regen, pedal sensitivity and the list goes on. Most cars save only mirrors and seat position. Best bet is to set your wife up with ALL the settings she prefers and save.

You give too much credit to manuals, I agree you should read them however they are far from explaining things so everyone understands and cover 75% of things we would like to know.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Beasts
Midnightsun,
If people are going to set up profiles doesn't it make sense to provide them with a list of things they can include in that profile? I guess what you are suggesting is that she go through every possible setting including locks, lights, doors, display, etc. in order to determine which of those settings would be exclusive to her and which would also apply to me. I'm not being sarcastic or nasty, it just seems that the obvious, most consumer friendly option would be to offer us lowly consumers a list.
As an example when I switched the setting from Chill to Sport my wife is convinced that she noticed a difference. Now, she doesn't drive the car as hard as I do so she could be wrong but I would hate to try out Insane one day thinking that change from Chill only applied to me and forget to tell her that I had done that! That could be dangerous. One would think that a change such as that would be a good one to make specific to the particular driver.
I think I need to go back to the manual and check to see there whether there is some guidance as to how to include particular functions in my profile. Beyond the basics you mentioned in your post I have made a lot of changes over time and each of them seems to have applied to whoever was driving the car. But then we find that Autosteer doesn't follow that rule. I simply set it to 2 clicks without any extra step to make that part of my profile and the computer automatically made that particular choice specific to me.
Yes, we could go through the whole process you suggested but I am constantly making changes, exploring different options and, since most of those are minor, I would like my wife to have access to them without having to change her profile for what might very well be a very temporary change.
I do appreciate your comments as they have given me a lot to think about. Regarding the regen I like to try to have the regen do as much of the slowing and stopping as I can, therefore I don't take the car out of cruise control or remove my foot from the accelerator until I calculate that the regen will do the job for me. An inexact science to be sure but it's fun to try to work with the computer, notice which traffic signs, etc. it reacts to and try to figure why my estimate was off. I also have never seen any indication that we have control over the amount of regen in our 2021 non FSD S and I thought I had read somewhere that we do not. Am I wrong? I also understand that as long as your foot is on the accelerator or the brake the regen will not engage?
 
Last edited:
Midnightsun,
If people are going to set up profiles doesn't it make sense to provide them with a list of things they can include in that profile? I guess what you are suggesting is that she go through every possible setting including locks, lights, doors, display, etc. in order to determine which of those settings would be exclusive to her and which would also apply to me. I'm not being sarcastic or nasty, it just seems that the obvious, most consumer friendly option would be to offer us lowly consumers a list.
As an example when I switched the setting from Chill to Sport my wife is convinced that she noticed a difference. Now, she doesn't drive the car as hard as I do so she could be wrong but I would hate to try out Insane one day thinking that change from Chill only applied to me and forget to tell her that I had done that! That could be dangerous. One would think that a change such as that would be a good one to make specific to the particular driver.
I think I need to go back to the manual and check to see there whether there is some guidance as to how to include particular functions in my profile. Beyond the basics you mentioned in your post I have made a lot of changes over time and each of them seems to have applied to whoever was driving the car. But then we find that Autosteer doesn't follow that rule. I simply set it to 2 clicks without any extra step to make that part of my profile and the computer automatically made that particular choice specific to me.
Yes, we could go through the whole process you suggested but I am constantly making changes, exploring different options and, since most of those are minor, I would like my wife to have access to them without having to change her profile for what might very well be a very temporary change.
I do appreciate your comments as they have given me a lot to think about. Regarding the regen I like to try to have the regen do as much of the slowing and stopping as I can, therefore I don't take the car out of cruise control or remove my foot from the accelerator until I calculate that the regen will do the job for me. An inexact science to be sure but it's fun to try to work with the computer, notice which traffic signs, etc. it reacts to and try to figure why my estimate was off. I also have never seen any indication that we have control over the amount of regen in our 2021 non FSD S and I thought I had read somewhere that we do not. Am I wrong? I also understand that as long as your foot is on the accelerator or the brake the regen will not engage?
Correct - you don't have a regen setting in your 2021. It is what it is, although it will be less when your battery is full or cold. You can feather the accelerator - if you are at speed, there's a point in the pedal travel where you're doing no regen and no accelerating - your energy display (a circle if your 2021 is the pre-refresh "legacy" Model S delivered in Jan/Feb, or a line if your 2021 is the newer post-refresh Model S delivered in the second half of the year) will show whether you're drawing power from the battery (yellow arc going up the circle for pre-refresh, or gray bar sliding to the right at the bottom of your instrument cluster) or putting energy back in (green arc going down the circle, green line going left of center respectively). So giving it a little "gas" will mean a little regen, giving it no "gas" will mean max available regen. Your right foot has all the control.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Beasts
Correct - you don't have a regen setting in your 2021. It is what it is, although it will be less when your battery is full or cold. You can feather the accelerator - if you are at speed, there's a point in the pedal travel where you're doing no regen and no accelerating - your energy display (a circle if your 2021 is the pre-refresh "legacy" Model S delivered in Jan/Feb, or a line if your 2021 is the newer post-refresh Model S delivered in the second half of the year) will show whether you're drawing power from the battery (yellow arc going up the circle for pre-refresh, or gray bar sliding to the right at the bottom of your instrument cluster) or putting energy back in (green arc going down the circle, green line going left of center respectively). So giving it a little "gas" will mean a little regen, giving it no "gas" will mean max available regen. Your right foot has all the control.
Thank you very much for the detailed response. I will definitely be looking for the line and learning to evaluate it appropriately.
However, I have this to say: I'm convinced that one of these days I am going to have to jerk myself back to the reality that I also have to be driving the car not just taking advantage of all of the information on the screens! Get your eyes back on the road boy!
I WILL NOT give in to the temptation to say that I am too old to take full advantage of everything this car has to offer. Still enjoying the challenge of the learning curve and finding it to be further justification for the price of the car as opposed to something to complain about.
I have never had a car where I felt the need to participate on a website in order to fully appreciate it and now I find myself spending hours perusing various topics regarding this Tesla. Still smiling!
 
I just went through the same thing in my 2022 S LR. I set up everything I liked at the time of delivery, but didn't set a driver's profile until a week later. Boom! No autopilot, no spoken instructions on navigation and a bunch of other things were all gone. I had to go into my profile and re enable everything to get it to work. There is also an easy entry option that slides the seat back and raises the yoke for entry and exit. If you turn that on, it creates an easy entry profile and you have to save everything again to that. It seems to default my keyfob to easy entry now instead of to my name. I need to set it to my name and make sure the key fob is seen that way.