Discussion: Tesla Vision system for Model 3/Y

[stopcrazypp]

What is ACC?

As pointed out, it's Adaptive Cruise Control or what Tesla calls TACC. Basically it's cruise control that slows down or brakes for cars in front. This is basically the only mode that would still be working with a radar car if there was low/no visibility (Autosteer obviously can't, given radar can't detect lane lines).

I'm arguing in this narrow circumstance, you wouldn't be safe using ACC either (I certainly wouldn't), and it likely wouldn't have helped in the given pileup example. It may give you false confidence to go at higher speeds, when there are serious limitations (like the classic example of where the target car in front changes lane, revealing a stationary car in front; most ACC systems will plow right into the stationary car, given the radar is typically tuned to ignore stationary objects).

 

[cardsdoc]

The Tesla vision statement was around May 25th. It states "in the weeks ahead" features will start to be restored via updates. It doesn't seem that there have been any changes yet. Are we thinking this is going to turn into months or longer? I would like to have a >75mph limit and it would be nice to try out smart summon even though I probably won't use it much.

 

[stopcrazypp]

The Tesla vision statement was around May 25th. It states "in the weeks ahead" features will start to be restored via updates. It doesn't seem that there have been any changes yet. Are we thinking this is going to turn into months or longer? I would like to have a >75mph limit and it would be nice to try out smart summon even though I probably won't use it much.

The LDW checkmark has been restored based on it being unaffected by radar removal. There is no time table yet for testing by NHTSA however of the other features. More details in my other post:
Tesla.com - "Transitioning to Tesla Vision"
Source article:
U.S. safety agency probes 10 Tesla crash deaths since 2016

 

[Gasaraki]

Someone else posted in the FSD section about this verbiage....tells me it's a double edge sword here.


"Please note that if you opt out from the collection of telematics log data or any other data from your Tesla vehicle, we will not be able to notify you of issues applicable to your vehicle in real time. This may result in your vehicle suffering from reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability, and it may also disable many features of your vehicle..."


Classic Tesla!!! Hey, we might turn your autopilot off if you cover your camera.....take that!

That's how ALL the other "Autopilot" like systems work. GM - Supercruise, Ford - CoPilot 360, etc, etc. People complain about the lack of face tracking in Teslas, people complain about Tesla putting in face tracking...

You just can't win with people.

 

[tech_nerd]

That's how ALL the other "Autopilot" like systems work. GM - Supercruise, Ford - CoPilot 360, etc, etc. People complain about the lack of face tracking in Teslas, people complain about Tesla putting in fact tracking...

You just can't win with people.

You're right, you can't win with people. And I've heard Supercruise is the best system out there, and it uses face tracking, so I think I'm ok with it, though I may still have my hands on the wheel anyway, still don't fully trust the computers.

 

[GlockWorkOrnge]

The Tesla vision statement was around May 25th. It states "in the weeks ahead" features will start to be restored via updates. It doesn't seem that there have been any changes yet. Are we thinking this is going to turn into months or longer? I would like to have a >75mph limit and it would be nice to try out smart summon even though I probably won't use it much.

Yeah, how many weeks are "in the weeks ahead?"

 

[id436eg9045]

Yeah, how many weeks are "in the weeks ahead?"

Wondering about the answer to this question is mostly what motivated me to snag a low-mileage demo M3 instead of waiting for my order to be fulfilled. I ended up with one of the last April builds before radar was removed and I'm glad I won't have to wonder when updates are coming to remove the limitations. It seemed worth the trade-off to me.

 

[GlockWorkOrnge]

As pointed out, it's Adaptive Cruise Control or what Tesla calls TACC. Basically it's cruise control that slows down or brakes for cars in front. This is basically the only mode that would still be working with a radar car if there was low/no visibility (Autosteer obviously can't, given radar can't detect lane lines).

I'm arguing in this narrow circumstance, you wouldn't be safe using ACC either (I certainly wouldn't), and it likely wouldn't have helped in the given pileup example. It may give you false confidence to go at higher speeds, when there are serious limitations (like the classic example of where the target car in front changes lane, revealing a stationary car in front; most ACC systems will plow right into the stationary car, given the radar is typically tuned to ignore stationary objects).

It's just the limit of vision, isn't it though?

Sure, TACC will hit the car in front, but then again the average person would too.

Sometimes accident are unavoidable and there's nothing a human or robot can do to escape.

I've become very comfortable with AP over the past week---I have no concerns about collisions, and I don't have any radars in my '21, May ordered and June delivered M3.

 

[funtommy]

This is a great presentation by Tesla's Andrej Karpathy from Sunday. He spends a good bit of time talking about their vision-only system (and Tesla's decision to adopt it). Gets into the nuts and bolts a bit. Definitely worth the 30 minutes if you have the time.

My apologies if this has been posted already and I missed it.

 

[id436eg9045]

This is a great presentation by Tesla's Andrej Karpathy from Sunday. He spends a good bit of time talking about their vision-only system (and Tesla's decision to adopt it). Gets into the nuts and bolts a bit. Definitely worth the 30 minutes if you have the time.

My apologies if this has been posted already and I missed it.

I think you meant to post this one?

 

[funtommy]

I think you meant to post this one?

Ah yes...that link is better. I'll try to edit my post. Thanks!!

 

[stopcrazypp]

It's just the limit of vision, isn't it though?

No, that's the limit of radar ACC and it's in the manuals of practically every car that uses radar ACC. The reason this happens is the radar must be tuned to ignore stationary objects, otherwise there are way too many false positives (like road signs, metal barriers, manhole covers, etc).

Sure, TACC will hit the car in front, but then again the average person would too.

The average person would follow the car that changed the lane or apply the brakes. That is what the ACC system expects you to do. It's not that there is no time to stop, it's the radar based system marking the stationary object in front as something to ignore, so it never attempts to slow or brake (it assumes the driver would address it).

Sometimes accident are unavoidable and there's nothing a human or robot can do to escape.

I've become very comfortable with AP over the past week---I have no concerns about collisions, and I don't have any radars in my '21, May ordered and June delivered M3.

As for truly unavoidable situations, the radar doesn't help in those. I'm just saying that the narrow situation where @Tam says radar provides an advantage (low to zero visibility conditions), I wouldn't feel safe using ACC either.

 

[TAfirehawk]

Add me to the list of very disappointed people in the Tesla Vision at this point (but still hopeful that updates improve it). The phantom braking happens 5-10 times per hour of highway driving, with some being significant slow downs that I am glad somebody wasn't right behind me. I don't have a lot to add from previous posts but just confirming the issues, like horrible auto high beams, already reported by actual Tesla Vision drivers.

My previous ride was a 2020 Toyota Corolla and quite frankly its lane centering technology, radar cruise control, and auto high beams are WAY better than my M3LR with Tesla Vision. Sad that a $20k car does better with the most used driving technology than the $60k car.

 

[Stranger Dings]

As for truly unavoidable situations, the radar doesn't help in those. I'm just saying that the narrow situation where @Tam says radar provides an advantage (low to zero visibility conditions), I wouldn't feel safe using ACC either.

Low to zero visibility is exactly the situation that I want my car to help me most. In the UK, we have plenty of rain and fog and having assistance to see through it would be useful. Relying solely on cameras may work in the bright sunshine of the California, but worries me greatly in other areas where visibility is regularly an issue.

I’d love my car to be able to give me more confidence in difficult conditions. That said, without any driver aids, driving in poor visibility is already stressfu.

 

[epj3]

Add me to the list of very disappointed people in the Tesla Vision at this point (but still hopeful that updates improve it). The phantom braking happens 5-10 times per hour of highway driving, with some being significant slow downs that I am glad somebody wasn't right behind me. I don't have a lot to add from previous posts but just confirming the issues, like horrible auto high beams, already reported by actual Tesla Vision drivers.

My previous ride was a 2020 Toyota Corolla and quite frankly its lane centering technology, radar cruise control, and auto high beams are WAY better than my M3LR with Tesla Vision. Sad that a $20k car does better with the most used driving technology than the $60k car.

This is exactly what I've been saying all along (echo my experience in a rental Corolla) and always get shot down by the stans. And then in this thread, it was suggested that it must be because I don't know how to use a steering wheel I was actually having a decent experience with AP over the weekend -- wearing sunglasses seems to get rid of the nags every 10-15 seconds. But wouldn't you know it, bright sunny 90 degree day and the auto wipers randomly decide to activate. Can't turn them off, auto wipers are required for autopilot. So, autopilot went off.

Anxious to have it explained that I don't understand how to use wipers, or maybe that I didn't try using the windshield washer for a precise 3.875 seconds required to try to fix it as per an obscure Elon tweet, or that maybe a bug splattered in front of the camera and this is a feature to smear the bug guts equally across the full camera array.

Let's face it, this all implies that FCW/AEB isn't actually functional. It's obnoxious and maddening and this is going to come back to bite Tesla. Flaky autopilot is one thing, flaky safety systems gets federal agencies involved. This is a genuine safety issue (and a consumer issue, as we were sold functional FCW and AEB).

Report a Safety Problem | NHTSA

File a complaint with NHTSA if you experienced a vehicle, tire, car seat or equipment safety problem that could be a safety defect.

www.nhtsa.gov

 

[rjpjnk]

Low to zero visibility is exactly the situation that I want my car to help me most. In the UK, we have plenty of rain and fog and having assistance to see through it would be useful.

I agree that it would be good to have radar to assist for the safety intervention features like emergency braking and lane departure, but personally I would never want autopilot to run in a situation where I could not see well enough to drive manually. I may be a bit old school, but my feeling is if you can't see the road you shouldn't drive.

 

[epj3]

I agree that it would be good to have radar to assist for the safety intervention features like emergency braking and lane departure, but personally I would never want autopilot to run in a situation where I could not see well enough to drive manually. I may be a bit old school, but my feeling is if you can't see the road you shouldn't drive.

The point isn't really about autopilot, though. It's about safety systems like FCW and AEB. If autopilot can't function in certain weather, neither will AEB.

 

[tech_nerd]

The point isn't really about autopilot, though. It's about safety systems like FCW and AEB. If autopilot can't function in certain weather, neither will AEB.

I mostly agree, but autopilot won't work for a myriad of reasons, like bad lane markings, or issues with the side cameras, it doesn't mean it can't see ahead. It's one of those things that we will never know until someone experiences an event where it saves them (or doesn't) from an accident. I've seen a few YouTube videos of people testing out the new TV systems, and so far it's been better than I would've expected in rainy conditions. That being said, I didn't have faith and bought a demo instead of the new one I had ordered because I don't want to be a guinea pig while the engineers figure out the other 20% of the code they should've had finished before releasing TV.

 

[GlockWorkOrnge]

Low to zero visibility is exactly the situation that I want my car to help me most. In the UK, we have plenty of rain and fog and having assistance to see through it would be useful. Relying solely on cameras may work in the bright sunshine of the California, but worries me greatly in other areas where visibility is regularly an issue.

I’d love my car to be able to give me more confidence in difficult conditions. That said, without any driver aids, driving in poor visibility is already stressfu.

Do people truly think Tesla made this switch without thinking of what you wrote?

Elon might be a flake, but as an attorney with corporate clients, I find it odd people think a car manufacturer would just decide to make a car less safe on a whim.

I'm certain this has been thought through, tested and ready. If this is not ready to go, it's not an overstatement to say it could destroy the company.

 

[tech_nerd]

Do people truly think Tesla made this switch without thinking of what you wrote?

Elon might be a flake, but as an attorney with corporate clients, I find it odd people think a car manufacturer would just decide to make a car less safe on a whim.

I'm certain this has been thought through, tested and ready. If this is not ready to go, it's not an overstatement to say it could destroy the company.

It's obviously been a goal of the company for many years now, and they've been working on it, but if they had supply chain issues and had to either release software that does 80-90% of what their previous version did, or not ship out almost any vehicles in the quarter, I'm pretty sure we all know the answer to this question. I don't think TV is dangerous or severely lacking, but I'm sure it's not capable of handling every single thing their previous "radar" versions did. Elon basically told us this, with certain functions being limited for a period of time (2 weeks HA) while they tweak things. They were backed into a corner and made the best decision with their available options, whether it was the right decision, only time will tell...