Don't trust automatic gear selection on refreshed Model S.

[Bigjohn892]

I was leaving a store this morning and when I taped the brake to drive off the screen selected reverse. The camera came on and there was an Ford F-250 grill covering the whole camera screen. Luckily I always double check. I wish now I'd taken a picture to send to Elon!

 

[Aggmeister2010]

Yeah, "auto gear selection" is one of those features that nobody asked for.

 

[WhiteWi]

I was leaving a store this morning and when I taped the brake to drive off the screen selected reverse. The camera came on and there was an Ford F-250 grill covering the whole camera screen. Luckily I always double check. I wish now I'd taken a picture to send to Elon!

I don’t get it, auto shift doesn’t replace your responsibility to check for pedestrians and cars/obstructions before you start to drive. What is the problem again?

 

[Tam]

I don’t get it, auto shift doesn’t replace your responsibility to check for pedestrians and cars/obstructions before you start to drive. What is the problem again?

The problem is the inconsistency that frustrates users. Sometimes it works fine, but sometimes it doesn't.

Imagine if it's an ATM that sometimes dispenses the correct amount of cash and sometimes shortchanges its customers.

Same with buying a calculator. The reason that we pay for the machine's ability is because of its repeatability and reliability: 2+2 must always display the result as 4 and never 3.

 

[lbowroom]

The problem is the inconsistency that frustrates users. Sometimes it works fine, but sometimes it doesn't.

Imagine if it's an ATM that sometimes dispenses the correct amount of cash and sometimes shorts change its customers.

Same with buying a calculator. The reason that we pay for the machine's ability is because of its repeatability and reliability: 2+2 must always display the result as 4 and never 3.

Worst analogy ever

 

[jebinc]

While no close calls, I would say auto gear select logic gets it wrong for me about 10% of the time.

 

[WhiteWi]

Give it a time to learn and it will get better with time.

 

[Aggmeister2010]

Man, so many excuses made for Tesla in here. I come from an Industrial Process Safety background, and these responses make me laugh.

"For now, it only almost makes me crash 10% of the time. But hopefully eventually it'll get better!" Yikes, guys. Especially when it's picked reverse knowing there's a car directly behind you already.

Maybe safety is old fashioned, but I wasn't "burdened" by pushing a stuck up or down to tell my car what way to go. This feature is unnecessary. It adds complication and uncertainty. It's a solution looking for a problem.

 

[lbowroom]

Man, so many excuses made for Tesla in here. I come from an Industrial Process Safety background, and these responses make me laugh.

"For now, it only almost makes me crash 10% of the time. But hopefully eventually it'll get better!" Yikes, guys. Especially when it's picked reverse knowing there's a car directly behind you already.

Maybe safety is old fashioned, but I wasn't "burdened" by pushing a stuck up or down to tell my car what way to go. This feature is unnecessary. It adds complication and uncertainty. It's a solution looking for a problem.

It doesn’t almost make you crash. If I’m nose into a parking space of course it will select reverse. Doesn’t mean you floor it without looking. Such hyperbole.

 

[URBAN LEGEND]

Good save by the OP. I have learned to be patient with this car before leaving. I have tapped the gas to go forward and it was in reverse. So I go slow with everything before I even tap the gas.

 

[lbowroom]

The car displays what it thinks the correct direction is before you even touch the brake. You have to have the seat belt on first, and the default setting is for this to be off. That means you have to opt in to even get it to this mode.....

 

[Aggmeister2010]

It doesn’t almost make you crash. If I’m nose into a parking space of course it will select reverse. Doesn’t mean you floor it without looking. Such hyperbole.

.....but it kinda sounds like......

Good save by the OP. I have learned to be patient with this car before leaving. I have tapped the gas to go forward and it was in reverse. So I go slow with everything before I even tap the gas.

.....it almost makes you crash.

So you have to go super slow and triple check everything before hitting the gas. I dunno, I'd just rather not have to deal with that, and put it in gear myself. If you like it, fine.

 

[lbowroom]

.....but it kinda sounds like......



.....it almost makes you crash.

So you have to go super slow and triple check everything before hitting the gas. I dunno, I'd just rather not have to deal with that, and put it in gear myself. If you like it, fine.

No, you don’t have to triple check everything and go super slow. In what weird situations are you guys putting your car in park?

Is someone forcing you to use it?

 

[M109Rider]

Man, so many excuses made for Tesla in here. I come from an Industrial Process Safety background, and these responses make me laugh.

"For now, it only almost makes me crash 10% of the time. But hopefully eventually it'll get better!" Yikes, guys. Especially when it's picked reverse knowing there's a car directly behind you already.

Maybe safety is old fashioned, but I wasn't "burdened" by pushing a stuck up or down to tell my car what way to go. This feature is unnecessary. It adds complication and uncertainty. It's a solution looking for a problem.

For New tech to improve, it takes time, incremental improvements, and tolerance of the users.
My iPhone glitches out, my computers glitch out, and pretty much every technology I’ve ever had as well.
I realize the differences between a glitchy iPhone and a glitchy car. But there is no way tech in cars will improve if you think it should be perfect out of the gates, no excuses. That makes me laugh.
These aren’t excuses, just a different outlook on using new tech, and an understanding that this type of tech can’t progress and improve any other way. Just because you don’t understand or subscribe to that, doesn’t make it an excuse.

 

[URBAN LEGEND]

No, you don’t have to triple check everything and go super slow. In what weird situations are you guys putting your car in park?

Is someone forcing you to use it?

Post of the Covid era right here. Not sure what is your point.

 

[lbowroom]

Post of the Covid era right here. Not sure what is your point.

My point is that you are wildly exaggerating any risk or special care that needs to be taken using this feature.

 

[_Redshift_]

For New tech to improve, it takes time, incremental improvements, and tolerance of the users.
My iPhone glitches out, my computers glitch out, and pretty much every technology I’ve ever had as well.
I realize the differences between a glitchy iPhone and a glitchy car. But there is no way tech in cars will improve if you think it should be perfect out of the gates, no excuses. That makes me laugh.
These aren’t excuses, just a different outlook on using new tech, and an understanding that this type of tech can’t progress and improve any other way. Just because you don’t understand or subscribe to that, doesn’t make it an excuse.

Majority of my professional life I have been a semiconductor design verification engineer. In the chip design business, bugs are very bad, expensive and time consuming to fix. So, a typical design team has almost 1.5x to 2x the number of verification engineers vs design engineers.
This is to make sure the technology that gets made into chips has close to zero bugs, if possible. Zero is never possible, but we try very hard.

In the software world, though, testing and validation is an afterthought most of the times. Except in mission critical software. Remember the 90’s joke about Microsoft and making cars? What if Microsoft made cars?” They would crash at least once every day”?

Well. We seem to be excusing some basic missteps in execution by Tesla and chalking it up to ‘oh, it’s just new tech, it needs time to learn’. I am seriously stupefied.

I am in agreement with a few others who say this is a solution looking for a problem. Screwed up execution should not be excused in this flippant manner.

 

[charliepmayer]

My Honda pickup trained me to verify the gear selection before taking my foot off the brake. The push buttons are inconsistent and poorly placed.

Transition to the Plaid autoshift was pretty easy thanks to the Honda.

Autoshift will occasionally choose "Drive" in an empty parking lot because it can't detect the parking curb under the car, but it works well enough for me to keep it active. If it didn't I would simply disable it.

 

[URBAN LEGEND]

My point is that you are wildly exaggerating any risk or special care that needs to be taken using this feature.

Ok. I’ll respect your opinion. I’ll continue to do what works for ME in MY car.

Clean non disrespectful exchange.

 

[WiLz]

.....but it kinda sounds like......



.....it almost makes you crash.

So you have to go super slow and triple check everything before hitting the gas. I dunno, I'd just rather not have to deal with that, and put it in gear myself. If you like it, fine.

Have you actually used this feature before? Please don’t make assumptions about it if you haven’t. Once you’ve used this feature, it is actually very convenient and an improvement over traditional shifting. Even though it might predict wrong 5% of the time, the other 95% of the time it is saving you the extra motion of making a gear shift. On the rare occasion it predicts wrong, you just have to manually shift to the correct gear, which is what you would’ve had to do anyway if you didn’t have the feature.

Now you basically get in the car, buckle seat belt, tap brake, and drive off. Whereas in a traditional car you get in, buckle seat belt, tap brake, manually shift into gear, and then drive off.

It shows a huge arrow on the screen in front of you of which direction it has predicted, and you would have to be seriously distracted to not notice if it’s not in the right direction.

It also automatically puts the car into park when you unbuckle your seat belt or open your door, which is another improvement in convenience and safety.