EAP trial thoughts day 3

[Swampgator]

I'm on my third day with the 30 day EAP trial. My background is that I really like to drive. I have owned a Bmw 3, Honda S2000, Mr2 Turbo, Mini Cooper S, Civis Si, etc.
I did not elect to pay 5000 for EAP because most of my daily drives are on surface streets with traffic lights and I didn't really have an extra 5K to throw away.

Some general thoughts: Super excited to get a free trial to try and change my mind, Thanks Tesla....But I don't understand why you didn't include autopark or NOA in this trial. ???


Specific thoughts:


Summon: Basic summon sucks. It is cool to show your friends how you can move your car a few feet with only your phone. But for practical purposes, summon cannot get into or out of my tight garage space when I can do it just fine by myself. Point HUMAN

TACC thoughts. On the interstate this is wonderful. Really should be standard in a 50-60K car IMO but whatever. On surface streets TACC is kinda scary as you have to be poised with your foot over the brake pedal the whole time in case it does not stop as intended. Also, if you are following someone on a surface street and that guy blows through a red light, your Tesla will happily accelerate right through it as well. If you drive a lot on the interstate TACC would be very helpful. If not it's pointless. I'll give this one to the COMPUTER though as interstate is it's intended use case.

Autosteer thoughts: Again, on the interstate it's mostly good, although a little like watching my 15 year old son drive. If you are in the left or center lane it's pretty solid. If you are in the right lane and passing lots of exits, it often gets confused as to position within the lane. Instead of hugging the dotted line to your left for example, it darts suddenly to the center of the "lane" where an exit from the interstate exits. Scary actually. Point HUMAN

Autopark: Don't have it on my trial but have experienced it on test drives. It's a cool party trick, but again, I can do a better job myself. if I lived in a big city and had to parallel park it would be super useful. I'll give this point to COMPUTER

So overall I feel good with my initial choice to not purchased EAP. I know if I lived in LA and was stuck in hell traffic for hours everyday I might change my mind.

Now, SMART summon when/if it arrives might be something I would pay for. Not 7K, or 5K. But 2K for sure yes. How nice would it be to have my car come pick me up on a rainy Florida night after dinner.?

Overall opinions may change of course as I am only 3 days into my trial. But I have driven highway, surface streets, and tried summon a few times. Over 400 miles in 3 days. IMO Tesla has a LONG way to go before true self driving that I would consider using over my own skills. I realize EAP is not FSD but it is the intermediate step.

Humans have shown once again their superiority over their creation.

 

[CullinKin]

I agree on most of the above points. I'm surprised your trial did not come with NOA or Autopark, as my trial came with both. I guess I'll consider myself lucky. However, I can never get Autopark to work... The P never shows up and I've tried to get it to show in so many parking situations. The only time it ever showed up was when I was at a red light in traffic lol.

Overall, for myself, being someone who really enjoys driving, there is nothing here that would immediately make me want to hand over $5K, or now $5.5K until after the trial ends. Now if it were FSD and it was totally ready, I would be all for it.

 

[SMAlset]

People making use of the trial period should read the Manual on the section of Autopilot now that they are using it. Specifically, TACC is NOT intended to use on city streets and stated as such in the manual and I'm surprised you would even use it for local traffic and comment on it.

From Manual: "Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. It should not be used on city streets."

We have EAP on both our cars and my husband loves TACC for his highway driving to work. We've also found it a pleasure to have on long highway trips.

Right now we don't use the other features of EAP. I have seen someone on the forum use Summons to get his car out of a parking situation where there were cars parked really closely on both sides of his car, making entry to his car to pull out risky along with increasing the chance of possibly scratching or denting doors in the process. Worked well for him in that situation. Regardless it's something you would want to try out in a safe space like a fairly empty parking lot or even your driveway just to get comfortable with the controls. Our cars are parked in our driveway right now so not even garage parking our cars at this point.

My husband tried out AutoSteer some time back and decided to wait for it to mature more before he wanted to use it. I know many people on the forum here use all aspects of EAP and others maybe just TACC or a subset of the suite of features.

 

[Swampgator]

People making use of the trial period should read the Manual on the section of Autopilot now that they are using it. Specifically, TACC is NOT intended to use on city streets and stated as such in the manual and I'm surprised you would even use it for local traffic and comment on it.

From Manual: "Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is primarily intended for driving on dry, straight roads, such as highways and freeways. It should not be used on city streets."

We have EAP on both our cars and my husband loves TACC for his highway driving to work. We've also found it a pleasure to have on long highway trips.

Right now we don't use the other features of EAP. I have seen someone on the forum use Summons to get his car out of a parking situation where there were cars parked really closely on both sides of his car, making entry to his car to pull out risky along with increasing the chance of possibly scratching or denting doors in the process. Worked well for him in that situation. Regardless it's something you would want to try out in a safe space like a fairly empty parking lot or even your driveway just to get comfortable with the controls. Our cars are parked in our driveway right now so not even garage parking our cars at this point.

My husband tried out AutoSteer some time back and decided to wait for it to mature more before he wanted to use it. I know many people on the forum here use all aspects of EAP and others maybe just TACC or a subset of the suite of features.

You assume I have not read the manual...like 5 times. Wrong. I'm aware of the language therein. But everybody with a brain knows EAP is the step prior to FSD. If autosteer is scary on surface roads at this point this just means to me they have a long way to go until FSD. Maybe the reason Elons cross country drive has been delayed several times? Sorry I tried it outside of the manual parameters. I hope you won't report me to the authorities.
You are from SF. As I said, I think for you high traffic commute folks it is probably wonderful. I know it's hard for someone from Cali to understand this, but most of the country (and world) do not live under those conditions.

And speaking of reading...I'm not sure you fully read my original post.

 

[Kant.Ing]

If they're now using all 8 cameras to do EAP, I predict TACC will be free in the near future!

 

[SMAlset]

@Swampgator I did read your post...and as you will see with regard to the manual I said "People making use of ..." didn't say you specifically, but I will now say I am still surprised given you've read the manual you'd use it in that way. That's pretty much all I said, never even quoted your post. Maybe you didn't pay close enough attention to what I posted. A bit snippy there with the authorities comment but I won't report you to the forum patrol .

As for the rest of the country, I've lived in the midwest and eastern section of the country and highways there when I was there were certainly busy/crowded enough, and I know from friends still there more so since we left, making EAP still very useful there.

And as mentioned my husband tried out AutoSteer some time back...nothing recently... and we've been following people's comments on how it's improved over time. Current users would be better to judge if it's getting closer to FSD, which we didn't order btw.

 

[Swampgator]

@Swampgator I did read your post...and as you will see I said "People making use of ..." didn't say you but I am still surprised you used it on the local roads anyway despite apparently reading the manual portion. That's pretty much all I said with regard to you specifically. Maybe you didn't pay close enough attention to what I posted. A bit snippy there with the authorities comment but I won't report you to the forum patrol .

As for the rest of the country, I've lived in the midwest and eastern section of the country and highways there when I was there were certainly busy/crowded enough, and I know from friends still there more so since we left, making EAP still very useful there.

In my original post I stated that TAAC was "wonderful" on the highway, which I also said was where it was intended to be used. I even gave my point to the Computer for that use case.

 

[Electroman]

I use AP everywhere there are clear lane lines - both back roads and highway. Works great. Can't think of driving a car without AP.

 

[ewoodrick]

Summon: Basic summon sucks. It is cool to show your friends how you can move your car a few feet with only your phone. But for practical purposes, summon cannot get into or out of my tight garage space when I can do it just fine by myself.
Summon is still in minimalist form, recent Elon tweets indicate that will change soon.

TACC thoughts. On the interstate this is wonderful. Really should be standard in a 50-60K car IMO but whatever. On surface streets TACC is kinda scary as you have to be poised with your foot over the brake pedal the whole time in case it does not stop as intended. Also, if you are following someone on a surface street and that guy blows through a red light, your Tesla will happily accelerate right through it as well. If you drive a lot on the interstate TACC would be very helpful. If not it's pointless.
It works awesome on both highway and surface streets. It is probably one of the most functional items that exist. It does an awesome job of slowing, especially if you happen to miss that the car in front of you is slowing.
No it doesn't understand red lights, but if you are behind a car and it takes of after the light changes to green, so do you.

Autosteer thoughts: Again, on the interstate it's mostly good, although a little like watching my 15 year old son drive. If you are in the left or center lane it's pretty solid. If you are in the right lane and passing lots of exits, it often gets confused as to position within the lane. Instead of hugging the dotted line to your left for example, it darts suddenly to the center of the "lane" where an exit from the interstate exits. Scary actually.
It also works great on surface streets, but it has its limits. Sure it stays in the middle of the lane as you pass exits, but it is much better than it used to be. It now takes curves a lot better, slowing when needed. It is much better than it was 6 moths ago.

Autopark: Don't have it on my trial but have experienced it on test drives. It's a cool party trick, but again, I can do a better job myself. if I lived in a big city and had to parallel park it would be super useful.
Until better summon comes, this is still pretty much a parlor trick.

Now, SMART summon when/if it arrives might be something I would pay for. Not 7K, or 5K. But 2K for sure yes. How nice would it be to have my car come pick me up on a rainy Florida night after dinner.?

What you are seeing is indeed beta software, there are things that sill need to be fully baked before prime time. Amazing to many Tesla pundits, many other manufacturers do offer the same capabilities and they often do it for a lot less. My 2018 Leaf has TACC and stays between the lanes, and it is a lot cheaper (~$1500). But, even at this point, the Tesla systems are significantly better than Nissan's. Tesla is already showing increases in performance and capabilities of its way to full self driving.

So, the price/performance of the capabilities today doesn't justify the cost. It's the future that you are buying. Do you want to possibly save a little money, but ride the wave of capabilities? Or would you rather sit back and wait for the technology to be proven and possibly pay a lot more in the future.

For me, I got it when purchasing the car, so it is just rolled into the monthly costs.

 

[Swampgator]

Software updated this morning to 42.2.1 and NOA and Autopark are both included now! Tried NOA on a 10 miles interstate drive and it worked well, although it was very conservative on the standard settings. I changed it to Mad Max mode and will test tomorrow morning to see if it suggests lane changes more aggressively.

 

[White Snake]

I'm on my third day with the 30 day EAP trial. My background is that I really like to drive. I have owned a Bmw 3, Honda S2000, Mr2 Turbo, Mini Cooper S, Civis Si, etc.
I did not elect to pay 5000 for EAP because most of my daily drives are on surface streets with traffic lights and I didn't really have an extra 5K to throw away.

Some general thoughts: Super excited to get a free trial to try and change my mind, Thanks Tesla....But I don't understand why you didn't include autopark or NOA in this trial. ???


Specific thoughts:


Summon: Basic summon sucks. It is cool to show your friends how you can move your car a few feet with only your phone. But for practical purposes, summon cannot get into or out of my tight garage space when I can do it just fine by myself. Point HUMAN

TACC thoughts. On the interstate this is wonderful. Really should be standard in a 50-60K car IMO but whatever. On surface streets TACC is kinda scary as you have to be poised with your foot over the brake pedal the whole time in case it does not stop as intended. Also, if you are following someone on a surface street and that guy blows through a red light, your Tesla will happily accelerate right through it as well. If you drive a lot on the interstate TACC would be very helpful. If not it's pointless. I'll give this one to the COMPUTER though as interstate is it's intended use case.

Autosteer thoughts: Again, on the interstate it's mostly good, although a little like watching my 15 year old son drive. If you are in the left or center lane it's pretty solid. If you are in the right lane and passing lots of exits, it often gets confused as to position within the lane. Instead of hugging the dotted line to your left for example, it darts suddenly to the center of the "lane" where an exit from the interstate exits. Scary actually. Point HUMAN

Autopark: Don't have it on my trial but have experienced it on test drives. It's a cool party trick, but again, I can do a better job myself. if I lived in a big city and had to parallel park it would be super useful. I'll give this point to COMPUTER

So overall I feel good with my initial choice to not purchased EAP. I know if I lived in LA and was stuck in hell traffic for hours everyday I might change my mind.

Now, SMART summon when/if it arrives might be something I would pay for. Not 7K, or 5K. But 2K for sure yes. How nice would it be to have my car come pick me up on a rainy Florida night after dinner.?

Overall opinions may change of course as I am only 3 days into my trial. But I have driven highway, surface streets, and tried summon a few times. Over 400 miles in 3 days. IMO Tesla has a LONG way to go before true self driving that I would consider using over my own skills. I realize EAP is not FSD but it is the intermediate step.

Humans have shown once again their superiority over their creation.

Swampgator summed up exactly how I feel about EAP. I have decided not to get it but still can change my mind. I would like to know if you changed your mind on getting EAP? I am in my trial now and trying to figure out if there is some reason I should buy it, since it will cost $1500 more later. Autosteer freaks me out all the time when there is an enormous semi in the right lane and the Tesla sticks right in the middle of my lane, only 2 feet from a huge truck. Human common sense would cheat over the left side of the lane. In fact, it seems always to keep the car more on the right side of the lane. There is a lot of construction on the highways with weird curves and barrels sticking out in the highway, and I'm constantly hoping the car won't hit a barrier. It does take some force to wrest control of the steering wheel, so I find myself as nervous as I am with my 15 year old driving, keeping an eagle eye on mistakes and ready to take control. I'm literally thinking "Hmmm, I wonder if the car will swerve a little to avoid that construction barrel?" Then a few second later, "Phew! Thank God the robot car didn't kill me that time!" When I just drive without autosteer I can confidently drive without worrying about who has control. It really is interesting to me how much I dislike autosteer. I thought I would like it before I actually used it. By this time, probably everybody reading this has realized I may have control issues.

Parking is just plain useless. It is so slow and has to correct multiple time. I know how to park a car just fine. TACC is something I actually like and would use. I currently own a 2017 Honda Civic with ACC that works perfectly. I can't believe I just dropped enough money on the Tesla to buy multiple Honda Civics, and no ACC unless I drop another $5.5k. Every dang car nowadays has ACC. I don't have to deal with LA traffic, so TACC is not critical to me, even though I like it.

Anybody have anything to tempt me to plop down $5.5k for features you can basically only use on the highway, which is the easiest type of driving? I realize my mind doesn't sound open, but really, I want to hear about it now, because there is no way I will pay $7k after the $5.5k offer is expired. I would pay $1000 for TACC BTW, maybe even $2000, even though it should be free. After my negativity, I want to be clear that I love my Tesla and the driving experience is the best I've ever experienced. I am very happy now, and will be happy with or without EAP.

 

[CameronB]

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions based on their experiences. Here's mine

Summon - Have never used it to try to park in my garage. I'll admit I am not brave enough. My garage is quite tight, requires entering from a bit of an angle and then correcting the angle after entry to straighten up and ends with my left side fender a mere 1 to 2 inches from a cabinet.

I have used summon exactly two times in real life, non-party trick situations. First situation was in a parking lot after it had rained and there was a very deep puddle of water by the front doors. Wife looked at the puddle and was completely dismayed as she'd have been ankle deep to get to the door (as would I - it was the same on both sides). Summon worked like a champ to just back out 5 feet so we could get in without getting shoes soaked. Nice! Second time was in a parting lot where another driver parked next to us and left less than a foot space between our cars on the driver side. Inconsiderate...sadly it was another Tesla parked next to me :-(. Anyhow...I used Summon to back out and it worked fine. So while I don't use Summon much (just the two times), I have loved having it those in those times.

TACC: I am probably in the minority, but I don't often use TACC without AutoSteer. It's "full AutoPilot or nothing" for me 90%+ of the time. But the times I have used TACC while I steered, it has worked great. I was even surprised the other day when a car in front of me changed lanes, revealing a completely stopped car maybe 100 feet in front of me (it was on an expressway that had stoplights)...and my car stopped normally. Surprised because that has been one of the historic known weak points for AutoPilot. So while likely not a solved problem, it shows improvement.

Full AutoPilot: On Highways/freeways, especially for long road trips, this has been a game changer for me. Other posts I have done here have documented how I literally (not figuratively) took a 5 hour road trip and AutoPilot (TACC+AutoSteer) was in control all but maybe 15 minutes of the entire journey. And that was when AP wasn't as good as it now. Now on freeways, it is almost flawless for me and just eats up miles and hours and leaves me feeling refreshed when I arrive after a long trip.

Navigate on AutoPilot: For the above (long road trip) use case it is great as it allows you to stay on AP even when moving from one highway to another (so I can go from 97% AP to like 99% AP since I no longer have to disengage AP just to transition manually to a different highway). Onramps and offramp are, in my experience so far, pretty badl. But I do believe they will get better.

AutoPark - Perpendicular. It does a pretty good job. It's a bit slow - so I won't engage it if the parking lot is busy, lest I upset other drivers around me. But it's never curbed the wheels and it does a nice job centering between two other cars. Can I back into a parking spot and do a better job? I would say yes, I can. But...I will admit that sometimes I back in and find that I am not quite as centered as I thought. So maybe I can get out easily but it's a bit tight for the passenger(s) - or vise-versa. In my experience the auto park is consistently "very good" whereas my reverse park jobs vary from excellent to very good to OK to "mmm...that wasn't great".

AutoPark - Parallel. It does a good job. Like above, it is slow. And so some times I have opted not to use it when I otherwise would because it takes 3x longer than I do and I want to be respectful of other people's time. It has never curbed the wheels. Don't tell my wife, but AutoPark can parallel park way better than she can. WAY better . Compared to me, I'd repeat my comments about the perpendicular parking...the Tesla AutoPark probably is more consistently "very good" whereas I vary from Excellent to just "OK".

 

[Richt]

Great summary. For long (3 hours to 9 hours) road trips and for horrible long stop and go those are the sweet spots for me.

 

[Richt]

Oh and I forgot when there is rain or fog. It’s the margin of safety.

 

[Peteski]

For me TACC works great in any form of traffic, slow or fast. I use it a lot of the time when following a line of traffic and it helps me to chill out when following along. It's also pretty handy just for keeping to a steady speed without traffic i.e. like a normal passive cruise control. Only time I don't use TACC in traffic is when there are a lot of parked cars on the side of the road, as that can cause unexpected braking. Otherwise I haven't had any scary moments with TACC not working as expected. I use it a lot more than I ever thought I would.

Autosteer for me is a motorway/highway tool and works very well in this environment. It's no substitute for human steering on winding roads unless driving very slowly. I occasionally use it in slow traffic on those roads, but usually just stick to TACC. But for long monotonous motorway stints, Autosteer is a great tool to have.

Autopark is a mixed bag. It can work great for parallel parking and it is very accurate and reasonably quick, if a little picky in when and where it will function - for example it wouldn't work the other day on a parking spot covered in leaves. For perpendicular parking I find it too slow, so very rarely use it. But for parallel parking I actually use it whenever it will function - which is most of the time and it can get into some pretty tight spots too - better than I can in such a large wagon without full 360 deg surround view. For this reason alone I think Autopark is genuinely useful.

Summon - too limited and too many pranged car stories on the forums to risk trying it!

Bottom line - I think EAP is worth it for most driving situations, but certainly at its best for long distance or sitting in traffic jams. I wouldn't want to live without it now after nearly a year. Interestingly it did take me a good few weeks to get the most out of EAP, so the 30 day trial period is really needed to get comfortable with it and figure out its strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Electroman]

Echo everything said above on how amazing AP is.

The trick is to use common sense - I know that’s a little harsh but I can’t find a better word - and quickly learn and know when you should use AP and when you should not.

One poster above said he was scared using AP in construction areas with concrete barriers and cones and barrels. And then decided AP is useless. Of course I would be scared too driving with AP there. But my common sense tells me that those are precisely what I would avoid and use AP only on sections where the lines are clear.

Simple.

 

[White Snake]

I live in a first ring suburb and drive away from the city for my commute to work, so I rarely deal with stop and go traffic. I also don't see myself stuffing my family of 5 in my Model 3 for trips so long road trips are less likely. For me, there seem to be too many instances when autosteer is not safe as mentioned by Electroman with the construction barrels. I don't mean that Autosteer is useless for everyone. I was trying to express that Autosteer induces more discomfort for me than it does provide comfort. Isn't that what Autopilot is all about? Providing comfort? Too many times I have to cancel Autosteer and too many times it gets too close to other cars for my comfort.

 

[LyftupX]

Call me crazy , there will be plenty of instances in the future where it will be less than the $7k.

This is a year end button push imo.

 

[PHXMD]

Call me crazy , there will be plenty of instances in the future where it will be less than the $7k.

This is a year end button push imo.

I agree. The easiest way to generate cash for a company with cash flow issues is to send an email to all non-EAP owners with a special offer. I'd bet we'll see that within 12 months.

What I'd really like to see is a short-term leasing option. Many of us have no need for EAP day to day but we do take the occasional road trip where it'd be nice. Charge me $100 a week to rent it and you'll get $1000 a year from me.

 

[chronopc]

Is there anything available on the market that is better than EAP for any price right now?