Driving a Tesla in the UK, as explained by a foreigner.

[SoCalNick]

I've owned a Tesla Model S in the US for about 4 years, and recently went on a trip in the UK. We rented a Model S through Turo, and had a fantastic host who was kind enough to rent us his car. Specifically, we got Model S 75D. It was a refreshed model and since he had purchased FSD, it was upgraded to HW3 and had MCU2. It was really so close to my car back home, the differences were the lack of a sunroof, and the driver's seat was on the other side.

Firstly, leaving the airport, I immediately had the "where am I sitting in this car" problem, where I tended to put the car into the left side of the lane, instead of the middle. It didn't help that the lanes were so small. A double-tap for AutoPilot, and the car was right there for me, putting itself back in the middle of the road.

We drove over 1300 miles in our 9 days out there, and the car was awesome, in just the way you would expect it to be. Free supercharging was also nice.

There are a few differences with a Tesla out there, and I just wanted to go over them...

Charging.

The Tesla Superchargers are slightly different. The Tesla plug is long gone, and the socket in the back of the Model S is called a "Type 2" connector. I was told by the owner that Tesla had changed this out.

When going to a v2 Supercharger, there are two cables; one with a Type2 connector, and the other with a (UK version) CCS connector. Connecting to a v2 Supercharger was easy.

When going to a v3 Supercharger, there was a warning on the navigation that I would need a CCS adapter (which had been provided by the owner) and was necessary to be used from the CCS only cable to the Type2 socket on the car. The adapter worked easily and even had a locking mechanism.


At a friend's house, I wanted to top off the Tesla (they owned a Model3) and I was surprised by the fact that their home charger (connector?) did not have a cable. Again, the owner of the Model S had provided a charging cable that had a Type2 connector at both ends. First time that I have run into a charger that did not have a cable coming out of it.

During our travels we stuck almost exclusively to Tesla Superchargers, although we did use a few others. In Rugby, the Tesla Supercharger (16 stalls) had a Starlink terminal above it (very cool) and another 16 non Telsa chargers right next to it (both CCS and ChadeMo.) We also managed to find (and use) the smallest supercharger that simply had 2 stalls.

In Scotland we used a public charger at the Falkirk Wheel, and again had to use our own cable. The charger worked and we got to see the wheel in motion. At another location in Scotland, we tried to use the charger, and were unable to get it to provide power (despite a phone call to tech support.) They said the charger had been used the day before with no issues, but all I got was a flashing red error light on the Telsa Type2 connector port.

Overall the charging in the UK seemed to be slower. I'm not sure if that's because of the 75D has fewer cells than my 100D back home, or just the systems are slower. The v2 chargers were listed on the map as 130kW and not 150kW like at home. I rarely saw over 100kW while charging.


AutoPilot.

Driving in the UK was awesome. The roads were smaller, they were never straight, and they had so many roundabouts. Roundabouts are a huge thing in the UK, and there are roundabouts instead of stop signs at 3-way intersections, and roundabouts instead of traffic lights at 4-way intersections and huge roundabouts to get on and off the motorways (freeways.)

Roundabounds were an issue for the navigation system. The problem was that some roundabouts would sometimes have an "exit" that was little more than an entrance gate to the farmer's field, and it was a running joke that "take the third exit" could also mean the 2nd or 4th exit. As you get on a roundabout, the navigation system (in front of the driver) would show you the map of the roundabout - but it would often disappear before the exit was taken, leaving you stranded on the roundabout with no idea which exit was yours.

Navigation waypoints were a similar issue to roundabout navigation. We would be on a route, and told to stop at the supercharger, and sure, it would get us to the correct car park (satellite view is awesome for finding the supercharger in car parks) - but before we actually got to the supercharger the navigation would assume we were on our way, and show use the route out of the car park and onto the next location. We often found ourselves scrambling to zoom into the MCU map to find how to get to the supercharger at the other end of the carpark.


Speed Limits and Signs.

First of all, let's talk about UK speed limits. The motorway has a 70mph speed limit, and they have traffic cameras everywhere to enforce this stuff. There are also "variable speed limits" where they may dynamically change the speed limit on the motorway from 70 to 60 to 50mph to help deal with traffic. We also ran into pollution speed limits where they changed the speed limit from 70 to 60 to help reduce pollution (according to the signs) - which was ironic when driving the Tesla, but hey.

The problem with the Tesla and the speedlimits is that the Tesla AutoPilot (Traffic Aware Cruise Control) always wants to change your speed in 5mph increments. So going from a 70mph to a 40mph zone was 6 taps of the AP stalk, which was frankly a pain. The UK does not have 25, 35, 45mph limits, so it would be great if Tesla would give an option for 10mph changes on the AP stalk, and not just 5mph changes.

The AP system was great with speed limit signs, and was really good about noticing that the last sign changed the speed on the motorway from 70mph to 60mph and adjusting the speed limit in the car accordingly - however there were some issues...

The UK has this great system of "count down markers" that really remind me of racetracks. There is a 300, 200 and 100 yard countdown to motorway exits, with signs with III and then II and then I on them before the start of the exit. Similar signs were used in villages to show when the speedlimit was about to change, so you could be driving though a village in a 30mph zone, and would get "countdown warnings" about the impending 20mph zone. Unfortunately, the AP would see the "20mph in 300 feet" warning as a "20mph zone" sign, and immediately change the speed limit in the car. This resulted in many audio warnings about breaking the speed limit, when we were not. In the US, we get "35 zone ahead" signs, that the car interprets correctly, it would be nice if the UK signs could also be interpreted correctly.

Another issue was truck-speed signs. We were on this road in the Scottish highlands (so beautiful) and were on a 60mph road (kinda like a US highway.) There were signs for trucks 7.5 tons and higher to have a speedlimit of 50mph.
This resulted in the AP stating that the speedlimit was 50mph and refusing to drive on autopilot with autosteer above 50mph. This made this part of the trip so much harder to drive, and was frankly annoying. In the US we get "55 Truck" speed limit signs on the freeways, even though the car speed limits are still 65mph, and the AP ignores them. The AP system needs to learn to interpret these signs in the UK.

Overall, driving the Tesla in the UK was a great experience. It was great to drive a familiar car in different conditions, and I would certainly recommend this approach to any other Tesla owners out there.

 

[thewishy]

I think those are all fair comments about the experience we get in our Teslas. Autopilot is useful here, but it's certainly more refined in the US from what we've heard. Issues like the truck speed limits are certainly widely reported (Although largely limited to Scotland)- although that said on a similar trip I made back in April, I only really used autopilot on the motorways rather than smaller roads. Expectations are probably lower, and our rural roads are more likely to cause random AP freakouts.
You might find a long press down on the right stalk allows you to sync the autopilot speed with the speed limit, rather than having to use the scroll wheel. (Undocumented feature AFAIK, but helpful)

The charger you had trouble with was likely ChargePlace Scotland, you're certainly not the first to point out reliability issues with their network. It was quite an early government funded scheme, and the machines are certainly getting tired. The RFID card tends to be better than the App.
The unteathered type 2 setup is common for public chargers across Europe for Level 2 chargers. I guess it's one less thing to be driven over / stolen for copper content. Domestic chargers are sometimes teathered, sometimes not. Overall it seems to work, but requires some frunk space

 

[mnobleuk]

Every day is a school day - I didn't know pressing the stalk could affect the speed on AP - when the speed limit changes I press the speed limit sign on the screen to sync or occasionally roll the wheel on the right hand side of the steering wheel (model 3).

 

[DeejUK]

Really interesting to read about from someone else's perspective

There are also "variable speed limits" where they may dynamically change the speed limit on the motorway from 70 to 60 to 50mph to help deal with traffic.

Variable speed limits are only enforceable if they are surrounded by a red circle. If it's just white text on a black electronic sign, that's advisory and you can ignore it - they're just trying to slow the traffic down so that you don't meet a stoppage further down the road. I didn't know this until a couple of years ago, so I thought I'd mention it in case others also don't know this.

 

[Bouba]

Really interesting to read about from someone else's perspective



Variable speed limits are only enforceable if they are surrounded by a red circle. If it's just white text on a black electronic sign, that's advisory and you can ignore it - they're just trying to slow the traffic down so that you don't meet a stoppage further down the road. I didn't know this until a couple of years ago, so I thought I'd mention it in case others also don't know this.

Can I quote you if I get pulled by the old bill ?

 

[thewishy]

Every day is a school day - I didn't know pressing the stalk could affect the speed on AP - when the speed limit changes I press the speed limit sign on the screen to sync or occasionally roll the wheel on the right hand side of the steering wheel (model 3).

Picked it up from this forum. It's a 1-2 second press, but not past the detent - so for example like if you were going to try and get the indicator to flash 3 times, but held for 1-2 seconds.

 

[robbieduncan]

I wonder how it manages on French motorways. I was driving on them recently (Tesla not arrived yet so in an older car without speed limit recognition). I was confused sometimes as to which limit applied as they had normal speed limit signs but with a little picture underneath indicating they only applied if pulling a trailer. Sometimes I'd miss the little picture and start slowing down. For a vision system it must be a nightmare

 

[DaveNN]

I've owned a Tesla Model S in the US for about 4 years, and recently went on a trip in the UK. We rented a Model S through Turo, and had a fantastic host who was kind enough to rent us his car. Specifically, we got Model S 75D. It was a refreshed model and since he had purchased FSD, it was upgraded to HW3 and had MCU2. It was really so close to my car back home, the differences were the lack of a sunroof, and the driver's seat was on the other side.

Firstly, leaving the airport, I immediately had the "where am I sitting in this car" problem, where I tended to put the car into the left side of the lane, instead of the middle. It didn't help that the lanes were so small. A double-tap for AutoPilot, and the car was right there for me, putting itself back in the middle of the road.

We drove over 1300 miles in our 9 days out there, and the car was awesome, in just the way you would expect it to be. Free supercharging was also nice.

There are a few differences with a Tesla out there, and I just wanted to go over them...

Charging.

The Tesla Superchargers are slightly different. The Tesla plug is long gone, and the socket in the back of the Model S is called a "Type 2" connector. I was told by the owner that Tesla had changed this out.

When going to a v2 Supercharger, there are two cables; one with a Type2 connector, and the other with a (UK version) CCS connector. Connecting to a v2 Supercharger was easy.

When going to a v3 Supercharger, there was a warning on the navigation that I would need a CCS adapter (which had been provided by the owner) and was necessary to be used from the CCS only cable to the Type2 socket on the car. The adapter worked easily and even had a locking mechanism.


At a friend's house, I wanted to top off the Tesla (they owned a Model3) and I was surprised by the fact that their home charger (connector?) did not have a cable. Again, the owner of the Model S had provided a charging cable that had a Type2 connector at both ends. First time that I have run into a charger that did not have a cable coming out of it.

During our travels we stuck almost exclusively to Tesla Superchargers, although we did use a few others. In Rugby, the Tesla Supercharger (16 stalls) had a Starlink terminal above it (very cool) and another 16 non Telsa chargers right next to it (both CCS and ChadeMo.) We also managed to find (and use) the smallest supercharger that simply had 2 stalls.

In Scotland we used a public charger at the Falkirk Wheel, and again had to use our own cable. The charger worked and we got to see the wheel in motion. At another location in Scotland, we tried to use the charger, and were unable to get it to provide power (despite a phone call to tech support.) They said the charger had been used the day before with no issues, but all I got was a flashing red error light on the Telsa Type2 connector port.

Overall the charging in the UK seemed to be slower. I'm not sure if that's because of the 75D has fewer cells than my 100D back home, or just the systems are slower. The v2 chargers were listed on the map as 130kW and not 150kW like at home. I rarely saw over 100kW while charging.


AutoPilot.

Driving in the UK was awesome. The roads were smaller, they were never straight, and they had so many roundabouts. Roundabouts are a huge thing in the UK, and there are roundabouts instead of stop signs at 3-way intersections, and roundabouts instead of traffic lights at 4-way intersections and huge roundabouts to get on and off the motorways (freeways.)

Roundabounds were an issue for the navigation system. The problem was that some roundabouts would sometimes have an "exit" that was little more than an entrance gate to the farmer's field, and it was a running joke that "take the third exit" could also mean the 2nd or 4th exit. As you get on a roundabout, the navigation system (in front of the driver) would show you the map of the roundabout - but it would often disappear before the exit was taken, leaving you stranded on the roundabout with no idea which exit was yours.

Navigation waypoints were a similar issue to roundabout navigation. We would be on a route, and told to stop at the supercharger, and sure, it would get us to the correct car park (satellite view is awesome for finding the supercharger in car parks) - but before we actually got to the supercharger the navigation would assume we were on our way, and show use the route out of the car park and onto the next location. We often found ourselves scrambling to zoom into the MCU map to find how to get to the supercharger at the other end of the carpark.


Speed Limits and Signs.

First of all, let's talk about UK speed limits. The motorway has a 70mph speed limit, and they have traffic cameras everywhere to enforce this stuff. There are also "variable speed limits" where they may dynamically change the speed limit on the motorway from 70 to 60 to 50mph to help deal with traffic. We also ran into pollution speed limits where they changed the speed limit from 70 to 60 to help reduce pollution (according to the signs) - which was ironic when driving the Tesla, but hey.

The problem with the Tesla and the speedlimits is that the Tesla AutoPilot (Traffic Aware Cruise Control) always wants to change your speed in 5mph increments. So going from a 70mph to a 40mph zone was 6 taps of the AP stalk, which was frankly a pain. The UK does not have 25, 35, 45mph limits, so it would be great if Tesla would give an option for 10mph changes on the AP stalk, and not just 5mph changes.

The AP system was great with speed limit signs, and was really good about noticing that the last sign changed the speed on the motorway from 70mph to 60mph and adjusting the speed limit in the car accordingly - however there were some issues...

The UK has this great system of "count down markers" that really remind me of racetracks. There is a 300, 200 and 100 yard countdown to motorway exits, with signs with III and then II and then I on them before the start of the exit. Similar signs were used in villages to show when the speedlimit was about to change, so you could be driving though a village in a 30mph zone, and would get "countdown warnings" about the impending 20mph zone. Unfortunately, the AP would see the "20mph in 300 feet" warning as a "20mph zone" sign, and immediately change the speed limit in the car. This resulted in many audio warnings about breaking the speed limit, when we were not. In the US, we get "35 zone ahead" signs, that the car interprets correctly, it would be nice if the UK signs could also be interpreted correctly.

Another issue was truck-speed signs. We were on this road in the Scottish highlands (so beautiful) and were on a 60mph road (kinda like a US highway.) There were signs for trucks 7.5 tons and higher to have a speedlimit of 50mph.
This resulted in the AP stating that the speedlimit was 50mph and refusing to drive on autopilot with autosteer above 50mph. This made this part of the trip so much harder to drive, and was frankly annoying. In the US we get "55 Truck" speed limit signs on the freeways, even though the car speed limits are still 65mph, and the AP ignores them. The AP system needs to learn to interpret these signs in the UK.

Overall, driving the Tesla in the UK was a great experience. It was great to drive a familiar car in different conditions, and I would certainly recommend this approach to any other Tesla owners out there.

A thoroughly interesting and enjoyable read.
I only ever use the wheel to set my speed and have never used limit recognition on any of my cars....if only because my X260 was convinced that the limit on the main road near mine was 70mph..not 30.

 

[Durzel]

Very enjoyable read.

How did you find AP in terms of "confidence" compared to what you're used to in the States?

I feel from watching YouTube videos, particularly of stuff like Summon, that the car is just so much more confident in how it drives autonomously over there, compared to here. Over here the car won't steer around a corner if it's too sharp, warning about Autosteer limits before cutting out entirely. Other stuff is similarly crippled by UNECE, I often feel like the car drives a bit like a learner driver who has not long passed.

 

[DrJFoster]

Our car's aren't crippled by UNECE regulations, the reason our performance is so far behind the US is because all the factors the OP has mentioned aren't taken into account yet. Even remote summon, our car parks are tighter than the US and I'd rather not have my car driver over curbs or grass banks when it fails.

 

[Durzel]

UNECE requires that the car receive a continuous signal (a dead mans switch) for summon, which Tesla can't do with the app. UNECE also restricts the maximum turning angle when driving autonomously. I'm not laying it all at UNECE's door, but Teslas operating in "ece_vehicle" mode (a configuration option) behave quite a bit differently.

 

[thewishy]

There were some job postings for Tesla autopilot tests to find areas where the car needs adjustment. Musk drives his Tesla in the states, if there are problems then the development team are going to get it in the neck. If there are UK specific problems, they're not...

France - it also get confused by speed limits, especially the limited for towing vehicles down hills

 

[SoCalNick]

Thanks for the replies everyone...

I think the long-press for autopilot speedmatch is a Model 3/Y thing, as the model S/X have a dedicated AP stalk.
An additional thing that works out here on Model 3/Y is that if you tap on the speedlimit on the screen, it will set the AP speed to that speed.

Interestingly, the Model S owner in the UK was kind enough to grant me permission to his car through the app - ie, add me as an additional driver. I got the invite, but when I clicked on the link it basically said that my USA based account was incompatible with this feature. As a result, I never got to use the app in the UK (but it was a very generous offer by the owner.)

I found that the AutoPilot was fairly confident steering in most situations. I found that on the motorway, if I asked for a lane change, I had to relax my grip in the steering wheel, or it would not change. It was fairly good on all roads with road markings for keeping in lanes. A-Roads, and B-Roads were generally not an issue, and I don't think I tried it on single-lane country lanes.

Overall I found that the confidence on the system was very similar to what I would expect in the US.
I found AutoSteer was very useful on many roads to assist me in putting the car in the middle of the lane.
The truck speed limit signs (yes, Scotland) were annoying, and are certainly deal with correctly in the US (we have TRUCK 55 signs.)

 

[Adopado]

The truck speed limit signs (yes, Scotland) were annoying, and are certainly deal with correctly in the US (we have TRUCK 55 signs.)

Just for information: The standard HGV (truck) speed limits are fairly rare even in Scotland. There is an exception on the A9 road which has a different HGV limit to the other A roads in Scotland ... so needs to be specifically signposted. The A road limit for HGVs is 40mph* as standard but the A9 is 50mph. In England the standard A road limit is 50 mph. Some international agreements on signage would help cars read the signs more reliably!

 

[Bouba]

In France we have freeway signs that give two different speeds depending if it’s wet or dry (and an explanation)..on country roads the speed is reduced to 50kph when you see a village name sign and you can resume your speed when you leave the village and see the same village sign but with a diagonal red line through it...and of course there are different speeds for trucks and cars towing caravans...so quite a lot of information on something as simple as speed signs.
Just out of interest, the last update that included speed sign recognition was not available for France

 

[DeejUK]

Can I quote you if I get pulled by the old bill ?

Absolutely! I had the pleasure of learning this fact in a safety awareness course... Rule 261 of the Highway Code says you must adhere to speed limits in red circles, but there's nothing in there to say you don't have to adhere to speeds presented on any other style of sign. I found one or two other posts talking about this.

 

[SoCalNick]

FYI: With regards to speed limit signs without red circles.

In the US, we have white & black speed limit signs. White background with black numbers.
These are speed limits.

We also have yellow and black signs. Yellow background, black text.
These are speed advisories.
You often see these on bends in the roads, etc.

The speed advisories sound like your non-limit signs you say above.
However, if you manage to piss off the police officer, they may still write you a ticket for "travelling faster than safe" because they think that travelling over that speed makes it unsafe, even though you're below the speed limit. Cops out here are so much fun.

 

[DaveNN]

Absolutely! I had the pleasure of learning this fact in a safety awareness course... Rule 261 of the Highway Code says you must adhere to speed limits in red circles, but there's nothing in there to say you don't have to adhere to speeds presented on any other style of sign. I found one or two other posts talking about this.

I'm not at all sure that it is 100% correct to say that one must adhere to the speed limits... you are allowed to drive slower.
Lest us forget that they are a limit not a target.

 

[DeejUK]

you are allowed to drive slower.
Lest us forget that they are a limit not a target.

Absolutely correct! Apologies if my choice of terms was misleading.

 

[Spacerat]

Just for information: The standard HGV (truck) speed limits are fairly rare even in Scotland. There is an exception on the A9 road which has a different HGV limit to the other A roads in Scotland ... so needs to be specifically signposted. The A road limit for HGVs is 40mph* as standard but the A9 is 50mph. In England the standard A road limit is 50 mph. Some international agreements on signage would help cars read the signs more reliably!

Applies on the A77 to / from Stranraer as well.