So I've tested this on a 300 miles journey. Here are my findings.
Conditions:
The weather was DRENCHING.
Motorway was busy
Streets were full of water.
- navigate on autopilot worked quite well to some extent, with the below notes to keep in mind
- failing to change lanes happen if you don't have your hand on the steering wheel at some point close to when you signal. If that happens, it will cancel the lane change (half way through) just freaking other drivers behind you.
-Nudging the steering wheel before changing the lane works to upto a 90% accuracy unless there is a car coming fast on the left lane.
- if you signal and there is another car on the left, it won't turn until a space is available, but will reject if the time out of signal passes which is a little annoying. Or if you haven't had your hand on the steering wheel a little before.
- taking the slip road automatically doesn't seem perfect. It hesitate and slow down immediately. I'd give that 5/10.
Once you know the above and follow it (300 miles is a long drive so it was like a training session), you get the hang of it and it works well.
Positives:
I for one honestly couldn't see sh*t on the road when it was drenching rain at one of the stretch. At some point I looked at the dashboard, and the car autopilot can see EVERYTHING clearly. It will disengage navigate in autopilot but autopilot is on. I felt safer letting the car drive than me taking over in that stretch as it had better visibility than me.
I passed at a supercharger and questioned the signaling point to the tesla service centre. He said its regulations but they hope to remove it as they work with the regulatory.
The trip overall was an absolute breeze. I loved every bit of it and didn't arrive tired as I would normally be.
Overall feedback and score - 6.5/10 with plenty of room for improvement.
NOW, recent ncap tests, rated tesla highly more than any others on the driver assistance side and backup system, but quite low on the "driver engagement" aka the nagging! Which means other will nag the driver even more, while tesla has less nagging which pissed off Ncap hence dropped its ranking quite alot just due to that variable
Reference:
Tesla Model 3 gets penalized in Europe despite top scores in vehicle assistance and safety
Annoyance:
- Roundabouts roundabouts. When the car take a slip road, it speeds up to the upcoming roundabout. It should slow down like the Audi (which uses the GPS information) to allow you to take the roundabout.
-if I signal, and there is no space yet, the car should find the best appropriate space to change lanes, and not time out mid way through after finding a space and starting the manouver then cancelling it abruptly due to timeout and going back to its lane.
Summon:
- you really need to be very close for it to work. Useful if you have a tight garage. And useful when large puddle of water built up under the car. I reversed it so I can get in..
Autopark:
- useless in the UK. If it found the parking(and that's if!) , it will park and I will have no space to open the door. Its not trained for small parking spaces we got here in the UK. Also every car waiting for you to park will loose their patience and drive off in front of you while the car is trying to park.
Conclusion: would I keep EAP- if you are doing some motorway driving. Absolutely. If you don't, then probably not. And wait for FSD (if it would be affordable).
If FSD learns roundabouts soon, this will be a game changer IMHO.
