Delay in getting Autosteer/AutoPark and Rain Sensing Wipers - We are owed a Refund

[Alan Sherman]

After being the most enthusiastic Tesla owner for the 3 years I've driven a Model S 85, the new 75D I just got in January is disappointing me in a few areas. The salesman I worked with on the upgrade was like most Tesla staff, excellent. But he did tell me that the HW2 cars with the 21 sensors would be brought up to parity with the older cars, as far as Autosteer and Auto Parking, in Dec or January at the latest. I have learned since that he told me exactly what Tesla told him to say at the time. I'm tolerant...apparently they have had a harder time than they thought after they ditched MobileEye, getting Autorsteer to work safely in HW2 cars. But I should be hearing from them with an explanation, with announcements, and a reasonable ETA. I have heard nothing, and have had to call customer service to find out anything. Not having features enabled in an HW2 car that are implemented in HW1 car is lowering the real value of my lease. I have 1500 miles on the car so far, made 3 lease payments, and have not seen any value for this $5000 option package. And I thought the rain sensing windshield wipers on my S85 worked quite well. If they were going to take the rain sensor out of the new cars they should have had the software in place to use the video cameras for the rain sensing. My AutoParking is not working at all, neither parallel or perpendicular. Service is looking into that. Is anyone else with a HW2 21 sensor ca using AutoPark successfully ? r I think they owe us a refund.

 

[KyleDay]

If I leased a car and paid for EAP (and even worse, FSD) I'd be pissed too.

I'm only patient as a long-term owner of an AP2.0 car, but in a lease I'd be looking daily at the calendar and getting more frustrated every day.

We all get the difficulties. I don't get the overpromising.

 

[HX_Guy]

Ive used the auto parallel park once and it worked great.

Completely agree on rain sensors and also what about auto high beams? This is tech that has been around for a while now, I don't understand what is so hard about having those two features.

 

[AWDtsla]

Here we go... I was wondering how long this would take to become an issue.

For what it's worth, the rain sensing function sucks... It's either not wiping or wiping way too much, I just gave up on intermittent wipers. Manually tap to wipe in the city, RainX and no wiping on the highway.

Maybe after the recent rains in California somebody is thinking of a fix.

 

[drklain]

The rain sensing function isn't turned on yet for AP2 HW cars... Right now the knob currently gives you a slow intermittent and long intermittent pause for those positions. Once auto-rain sensing is enabled, the knob will change to be the low and high rain sensitivity setting like the AP1 cars....

 

[AWDtsla]

The rain sensing function isn't turned on yet for AP2 HW cars... Right now the knob currently gives you a slow intermittent and long intermittent pause for those positions.

I wish I could have that.

 

[somnambule]

I wish I could have that.

Exactly. Be careful what you wish for. I'd trade the rain-sensing wipers in my AP1 car for slow and fast intermittent settings in a heartbeat.

 

[calisnow]

After being the most enthusiastic Tesla owner for the 3 years I've driven a Model S 85, the new 75D I just got in January is disappointing me in a few areas. The salesman I worked with on the upgrade was like most Tesla staff, excellent. But he did tell me that the HW2 cars with the 21 sensors would be brought up to parity with the older cars, as far as Autosteer and Auto Parking, in Dec or January at the latest. I have learned since that he told me exactly what Tesla told him to say at the time. I'm tolerant...apparently they have had a harder time than they thought after they ditched MobileEye, getting Autorsteer to work safely in HW2 cars. But I should be hearing from them with an explanation, with announcements, and a reasonable ETA. I have heard nothing, and have had to call customer service to find out anything. Not having features enabled in an HW2 car that are implemented in HW1 car is lowering the real value of my lease. I have 1500 miles on the car so far, made 3 lease payments, and have not seen any value for this $5000 option package. And I thought the rain sensing windshield wipers on my S85 worked quite well. If they were going to take the rain sensor out of the new cars they should have had the software in place to use the video cameras for the rain sensing. My AutoParking is not working at all, neither parallel or perpendicular. Service is looking into that. Is anyone else with a HW2 21 sensor ca using AutoPark successfully ? r I think they owe us a refund.

Your words are toothless until you demand a refund in writing from Tesla. This post is one of a whole genre which goes like so:

OP: "Tesla owes me money because XYZ."
Responses: "Have you demanded the money?"
OP: "No, I want to see if others feel as I do."

What these posts prove is that people want their feelings validated, not actually to receive a refund.

My suggestion is if you want more than validation and empathy and you actually feel Tesla owes you money to ask for it and then tell us what response you get. That would be useful for us.

 

[Matias]

Ive used the auto parallel park once and it worked great.

Completely agree on rain sensors and also what about auto high beams? This is tech that has been around for a while now, I don't understand what is so hard about having those two features.

Rain sensors usually use dedicated sensor (duh). I don't know, if any car maker in the world has implemented rain sensors with video cameras. So it maybe harder than Tesla thinked.

How Windshield Wipers Work

"An infrared beam is reflected off the outside surface of the windshield to the infrared sensor array. When moisture strikes the windshield, the system experiences an interruption to its infrared beam. Advanced analog and digital signal processing determines the intensity of rain or snow."

http://s.hswstatic.com/pdf/rain-sensor.pdf

 

[mrkisskiss]

Actually, the rain sensors and the auto high-beam were also a part of the Mobileye camera system...

http://www.mobileye.com/category/oem/

2) Camera unit: For LDW system
The camera unit is mounted at the top of the windshield (see image below) and monitors the position of the lane dividing lines in front of the vehicle. To prevent fogging of the lens and maintain precise and consistent imaging quality, the unit is mounted directly to the windshield inside the vehicle. The unit also incorporates a sensor which automatically turns on the windshield wipers when it detects raindrops on the windshield.

Intelligent High Beam

I would imagine this was just code that got yanked out when they divorced Mobileye and they found themselves caught short... I'm sure it's been someone's project for the last few months.

What is certainly clear is that Mobileye was a huge part of the overall Tesla experience.

 

[Matias]

^ "The unit also incorporates a sensor " suggests, that also MobilEye implemented rain sensor with dedicated sensor, not video prosessing of the camera image.

 

[TES 90D]

In certain circumstances, the adaptive cruise control baulks. Ie when the car in front turns off, even though it is well out of the way, the car will come almost to a complete stop. Easy enough to override by pressing the throttle, but still annoying. We also experience a jerky ride on some minor roads where it seems to baulk at shadows. I am posting here in the hope that someone from Tesla will consider making the old standard cruise control a selectible feature. This would also be useful for the situation when snow on the sensors disables the adaptive version. We recently were crossing a narrow bridge, and the Tesla just said "no, not doin it", and stopped. I didn't blame it, I wasn't too comfortable driving across the bridge myself.

 

[mrkisskiss]

Yep, it does suggest that.

Either way, it's Mobileye code and sensing that controls both auto wiper and headlights - has been part of their EyeQ SoC for about a decade, and was yanked out rather unexpectedly with the HW2 revision. It's probably hard for Tesla to build their own version that works equally as well in a few months.

Of course, the reason for the delay may be more simple; it may be dependent on having better software abstraction between HW1 and HW2 cars - most likely this been the source of a lot of the work in 8.1. Firmware is another matter, but I think 8.1 is the first major software revision released since HW2 cars have been available (8.0 was probably finalised in late August 2016, HW2 cars started rolling off the line in October 2016).

I'd imagine that it would get complex to support multiple hardware suites within the same codebase. I would guess that 8.1 will basically have it's own build for HW2 cars... whereas 8.0 probably didn't, or at least not really.

Hopefully this is the case; if it is, it means that 8.1 for HW2 will probably bring a lot of the things seemingly lacking at the moment. The software will now suddenly responsible for controlling wipers, headlights... we'll probably see better visualisation of Tesla Vision on the dash (cars in adjacent lanes, stop signs, speed signs), and so on.

And hopefully all within a couple of weeks

 

[disagree]

Your words are toothless until you demand a refund in writing from Tesla. This post is one of a whole genre which goes like so:

OP: "Tesla owes me money because XYZ."
Responses: "Have you demanded the money?"
OP: "No, I want to see if others feel as I do."

What these posts prove is that people want their feelings validated, not actually to receive a refund.

My suggestion is if you want more than validation and empathy and you actually feel Tesla owes you money to ask for it and then tell us what response you get. That would be useful for us.

Personally, I don't want a refund for the cost of EAP. I want punitive damages. I don't like being defrauded. Contacting Tesla is pointless, since they cannot do a thing to rectify the situation -- one can't make the false true.

To that end, I've contacted the FTC. And I will keep you posted.

 

[_jal_]

I am posting here in the hope that someone from Tesla will consider making the old standard cruise control a selectible feature. This would also be useful for the situation when snow on the sensors disables the adaptive version. We recently were crossing a narrow bridge, and the Tesla just said "no, not doin it", and stopped. I didn't blame it, I wasn't too comfortable driving across the bridge myself.

We own a futuristic car called a Subaru that has a button that toggles between TACC and just regular CC. High tech.

 

[zer0cool]

Elon always underestimates development time. AP1 software took a full 12 month to develop and when it first started it was quite abrupt and tended to want to exit the highway frequently and took a few more months to smooth out. So really HW1 came out in Sep 2014 but the software wasn't really good until end 2015. HW2 came out Sep 2016. Honestly I thought this time would be faster too since they already did it once. But I guess the hardware is sufficiently different that experience with the previous hardware doesn't seem to really apply. So it appears one may have to give it 12-15 months this time as well.

Ya I agree it sucks to pay for something that's not really useable on a lease. The same thing happened to someone who leased in late 2014... but at least AP was only $2500 at the time.

TBH, I don't think EAP, even when fully implemented as described, is significantly better than AP1. I think it adds maybe only 5% more feature for 100% more price. I honesty think it's just a way for Tesla to increase the price on the option because it realized that AP1 was priced too cheaply compared to competitors.

 

[calisnow]

Personally, I don't want a refund for the cost of EAP. I want punitive damages. I don't like being defrauded. Contacting Tesla is pointless, since they cannot do a thing to rectify the situation -- one can't make the false true.

To that end, I've contacted the FTC. And I will keep you posted.

Why have you contacted the FTC instead of hired an attorney to issue a demand letter on your behalf to Tesla and then sue when Tesla fails to cut you a check for whatever punitive damages you feel you are owed?

 

[Eclectic]

Personally, I don't want a refund for the cost of EAP. I want punitive damages. I don't like being defrauded. Contacting Tesla is pointless, since they cannot do a thing to rectify the situation -- one can't make the false true.

To that end, I've contacted the FTC. And I will keep you posted.

You should also contact the California attorney general if you're going that route. Not that the California attorney general is good for anything that matters to most people, but you may be the lucky person who gets them to protect your rights.

 

[disagree]

Why have you contacted the FTC instead of hired an attorney to issue a demand letter on your behalf to Tesla and then sue when Tesla fails to cut you a check for whatever punitive damages you feel you are owed?

I'll assume for a second that you're being sincere. I contacted the FTC because I believe they could better force Tesla to change their business tactics. Tesla can't do anything for me personally (they can't make good their claims though time travel. I don't want 5k. I want EAP). And really, litigation is expensive and time-consuming. But Tesla can learn that going forward they are held to the same standards as other companies -- and the FTC has that power. I suppose I could contact the Illinois AG, too.

In any event, I bet someone angrier than I will try to get a class formed.

 

[somnambule]

I'm honestly surprised that Tesla sells features that are not yet available. Why sell EAP when it's not ready? They are already setup to enable and pay for the feature post-sale. Why wouldn't they just say the EAP/FSD hardware is there in every car, and the buyers can pay for it and enable when it becomes available. The only "complexity" would be to drop the post-purchase enablement premium for people who bought AP2 cars before the feature became available (which should be trivial).