I recently drove my X from SC to Boston. On the way it was snowing. Every 1-2 hours my car would drop off of autopilot because snow would accumulate on the front and block the radar when it reached about 1cm thick. I had to repeatedly stop and clear it. Has anyone had this problem? Is there a solution? Maybe ceramic coat?
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Driving during snow
- Thread starter Geeber
- Start date
You’re right. When the radar quits working you can’t use it. But more to the point you can’t set cruise control. Have you tried driving for 3 days straight without cruise control?
DirtyT3sla
Member
Let me know how it works for you. It's worked for me in a couple snows now, but I find I do need to reapply it sometimes.
Reference on Tesla's site here too: Winter Driving Tips
Frozen Autopilot Sensors and Cameras
For optimal performance, clear autopilot sensors and cameras of snow, ice, mud and dirt. You can also prevent ice buildup by applying Rust-Oleum Never Wet Top Coat to the front fascia of your car. For more information, see ‘About Driver Assistance’ section of the owner’s manual.
This is why it's absolutely ridiculous that Tesla didn't include a way to activate standard cruise control on AP-equipped vehicles. IIRC, you could purchase an AP2.0 hardware vehicle without AP and you'd have standard cruise, in which case it's not like the hard part isn't already done (building standard cruise into the software).
My old 2006 Audi A8 had radar-TACC. When all gummed up with snow, the radar would disable itself and TACC, and therewith Cruisecontrol, would not work anymore either.
But I never regarded it as a problem because when the weather is so bad, one should not use Cruise-control in the first place.
I don't see ANY Self-driving system or just a TACC, from any manufacturer, drive around in really awful weather. I'm not talking about water or snow on the ground. That's fine. Im talking about situations where visibility is super bad, the road is treacherous, slippery, nasty and causes massively reduced traction. We Swiss drive in that crap 4 to 5 months a year. But we can handle it. We sliver and slide, drift and jive and we are fine (it's mostly tourists and expats that cause accidents during Winter because they keep on driving like the roads are just fine, having no clue how to handle crappy conditions).
So are you leaving out bits and pieces, or are you telling me that you read the entire manual and it was simply impossible to use standard cruise control in your 2006 Audi A8? I suppose that's possible, but I can tell you that a 2018 VW Atlas and a 2020 Lexus E350 both allow you to use standard cruise control even when they are equipped with TACC. I can also tell you that my 2006 Infiniti M45 had the option to enable standard cruise control instead of TACC as well. Speaking of leaving out bits and pieces, though, that option would work fine until/unless TACC was engaged and threw an error, after which rebooting the car would allow you to get back into standard mode again.
I can appreciate this advice if one is driving a vehicle so old that it doesn't have traction control. That having been said, I think that advice is terribly dated and no more than CYA advice at this point. Why do I think that, you ask? Here 's the thing about traction control, which has been pretty much standard for over two decades: it uses the brakes. What does traction control have to do with anything, you ask? Well, here's the thing about brakes: they disengage standard cruise control immediately. So tell me this: do you think you're going to realize you're hydroplaning and get your foot off of the accelerator faster than traction control can engage? If not, standard cruise control in a traction control equipped vehicle will typically remove acceleration faster than you can do so yourself in a scenario where that's what needs to happen.
PACEMD
Active Member
I tried that once, from like 1969 up through the 1990s, but yeah, I hear you............
The 90's? Really? Did you keep your cars for 20 years each? I mean, yeah, A/C and CC were rare in the 60s, but they were pretty common in the 80s...
PACEMD
Active Member
Ah, you kids today wid your cruise controls.........why in my day..........
I can tell you that the two Audi A8's, plus my 2014 Model S, plus the Skoda Octavia and Ford Mondeo of my wife, plus the 2007 Audi A4 Convertible i've had, ALL have the nasty tendency to NOT disengage cruise-control at all when hydro-planing (or losing traction in general). Instead they brake and ABS/ESP/"other 3 letter abbreviations" corrected the cars if needed. The cars did what ever was needed to keep me/us safe. We never had an accident.
But the problem is NOT how CC and ESP/ABS saved our butts while sliding towards doom. It's what happens AFTER those cars regained normal traction:
So the cars slowed down quite a bit if needed from say, 120km/h, then regaining traction and all is good and THEN... the cars automatically resumed back to their set speed (remember CC was not turned off).
Especially the last A8, with it's 4.2 Liter V8 and 350hp, shot off like a rocket to get back to its set speed. But it was still driving in slush/water/nasty stuff. So the whole theatre repeated soon after when it hit the next patch of road with reduced traction. Scary sh*t I tell ya.
When it did that, I touched the brake-pedal which disengages CC and I reduced speed to whatever I felt was safe at the time.
Those are MY experiences with MY (and Wifey's) cars. And that is how I formed MY opinion on using cruise-control in low-traction conditions. They where all European models by the way (except the 2014 Model S of course).
I have to assume that this response means that you did not, in fact, read the manual for your 2006 Audi A8. Thusly, I have to assume that you could have used standard cruise if you had known how. "Cruise Control" and "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" are two very different beasts in spite of the fact that they share the same name. Every experience I have had with standard cruise control losing traction for any reason in any vehicle with traction control has been an immediate disengagement of cruise control regardless of whether or not the vehicle even had a TACC option. What you are describing sounds very much like behavior one could expect under TACC. So, regarding all of these other (non-Tesla) vehicles and your experiences, do they also all have TACC? If so, perhaps you should read their manuals and find out if you can engage standard cruise control instead (we already know that a Tesla with AP doesn't have the option). Outside of that scenario, I would tend to agree with you, don't use cruise control in those vehicles under questionable conditions.
With an almost evil smug on my face, I can inform you that I actually just read the manual (audi_a8_2006_Betriebsanleitung_253ghd.pdf).
I drove four Audi's and I always kept all the documentation (Audi provides PDF's). Never knew i'd need it again many years later
On page 5 it explains the working of the "Adaptive Cruise Control". It can be turned on and off, paused and resumed and one can set the distance and increase/decrease speed (move stalk up and down).
It is NOT possible to switch between "Cruise control" and "Adaptive Cruise Control". The latter is the only option.
Do I get a cookie now?
Last edited:
I just went through my foto's. Many moons ago, some guy backed his Van's trailer-hitch into my A8's radar once, ruining it. The car automatically disabled the radar and therewith the (adaptive) cruise control. It took 3 weeks to get a new radar unit, brackets etc. so I drove around like this for 3 weeks waiting for parts and hence totally without Cruise Control. I really missed having it. Crazy how one can get spoiled by such features. My 1991 and 1993 Audi's had no CC at all and I did not know any better.
You can see the Radome as the cover was sheared off.
You can see the Radome as the cover was sheared off.
My Jeep had both ACC and Speedometer based Cruise Control. Driving in bad storms would shut ACC down, but it was rare, because I avoid driving in bad storms. But I think I'm so used ACC (or TACC or AP) that I'd probably forget that it won't slow down on an approaching vehicle and I'll smash into them. As it is I'm get so used to AP, when I lose it or drive another car that only has ACC I have to concentrate and remind myself that it's not going to steer. It becomes muscle memory that I expect it to steer (and stop).
Last edited:
<insert cookie here>With an almost evil smug on my face, I can inform you that I actually just read the manual (audi_a8_2006_Betriebsanleitung_253ghd.pdf).
I drove four Audi's and I always kept all the documentation (Audi provides PDF's). Never knew i'd need it again many years later
On page 5 it explains the working of the "Adaptive Cruise Control". It can be turned on and off, paused and resumed and one can set the distance and increase/decrease speed (move stalk up and down).
It is NOT possible to switch between "Cruise control" and "Adaptive Cruise Control". The latter is the only option.
Do I get a cookie now?
Sorry for your experience there. It would almost surprise me, except VW has always done things differently. For instance, they still don't have tire pressure display in the IC even in a pretty new Q7, but instead opt to have rotation-based TPMS. I'd still recommend reading the manuals for those other vehicles if you own them, but that's because I would actually use standard cruise in my X given the option.
If that's all you ever use, I can see getting used to it, but I actually switched between the two frequently in my 2006 Infiniti and would do the same in my 2017 Tesla if I had the option. I can see where it wouldn't be useful to some populations, but where I live, there are less people and less cars, so I seldom had to cancel on two lane roads when passing people, and thusly had a much smoother experience. OTOH, with TACC, the vehicle almost always slows down when I don't want it to with more distance than I want to have when I switch lanes for a pass. Overriding with the accelerator pedal isn't much smoother since there's no tactile feedback. If the accelerator pedal moved with the cruise control the way they did back when the fuel linkage was mechanical, I probably would be used to TACC and not want to switch back and forth, because in ICE vehicles that had mechanical linkage, I would override with the accelerator coming into hills to prevent a downshift. The Infiniti was worse than the Tesla for this, though, because it didn't have mechanical linkage, but it had a truck transmission. I learned with the Infiniti that I could actually decelerate with the accelerator since it overrides as soon as I touch it, but since there was latency between the accelerator and the propulsion, overrides weren't as rough as they are in the Tesla. I'd say that's the only downside I've ever experienced to the instantaneous torque response offered by EVs, and IMO, it's a design issue. Because of it, switching between manual override via the pedal and TACC almost always affects speed (it's possible to get the accelerator to exactly the right spot from off before the vehicle slows down when you're overriding while TACC is already on, if you're lucky enough or good enough, but I don't think it's possible to get from exactly the right spot to off via the accelerator while TACC is on, I've certainly never pulled my foot off of the accelerator without experiencing a slight deceleration, even when already going below the set speed). At least the Tesla doesn't have gears, I guess.
Hey nice discussion. I enjoyed reading it and was surprised what my question kicked off. Fun.
The weather and traffic were not so bad to make me worry about using my TACC. I was using it as plain old CC because there few cars on the road and I'm very attentive. Also, the snow/ice on the bumper baffled me a bit because it seamed out of proportion to the slight snow. Like ElectricSteve I grew up in the mountain and driving in snow is not a concern for me.
But now I have ordered the Rust-Oleum Never Wet. It came in a two step kit. I couldn't get Step 2 separate from the kit. Has anyone tried the using the Step 1 Base Coat? I didn't see it discussed on the Tesla site mentioned by DirtyT3sla. Do you only use Top Coat? Why? Also I noted that the can says it goes on clear and then turns cloudy? What's with that, do you buff out the cloudiness? Can you not see it?
Thanks for your ideas.
The weather and traffic were not so bad to make me worry about using my TACC. I was using it as plain old CC because there few cars on the road and I'm very attentive. Also, the snow/ice on the bumper baffled me a bit because it seamed out of proportion to the slight snow. Like ElectricSteve I grew up in the mountain and driving in snow is not a concern for me.
But now I have ordered the Rust-Oleum Never Wet. It came in a two step kit. I couldn't get Step 2 separate from the kit. Has anyone tried the using the Step 1 Base Coat? I didn't see it discussed on the Tesla site mentioned by DirtyT3sla. Do you only use Top Coat? Why? Also I noted that the can says it goes on clear and then turns cloudy? What's with that, do you buff out the cloudiness? Can you not see it?
Thanks for your ideas.
Similar threads
- Article
