Firmware 7.0

[gzerninplatz]

I like it...and I'm short enough to see the speedo, so that isn't an issue.
I miss the display of instantaneous energy use/regen on the dash, though, and can't waste a whole segment just to see that...would be easy to just add a little light that is yellow or green and gets bigger or smaller as energy changes - this is a biofeedback mechanism that helps reduce energy use!
Re Fobo, you still have to click over and then back to see pressures and then see your usual display...and there is no alarm for slightly low pressure, which is where Fobo is great - I alert when 2 lbs down, well in advance of having a real problem...will probably use car display for routine check and Fobo for alarm, keeping both.

 

[JMG]

It's a certainty that you need to really babysit it for a while, and get used to it. It's very helpful to anticipate conditions where you know it might have trouble.

Coming in to work this morning, the highway had some fairly faded stripes, and I was driving through the trees with an early morning sun casting very stark shadows across the highway. This seemed to confuse autopilot a little bit. Then later driving through town, the shadows of the adjacent powerlines (which drew black shadows almost in the middle of the lane) confused it a few times and needed me to take over.

Overall well done, and I'm sure it'll get better quickly with all of this data rushing in now.

 

[Cyclone]

I think they're going to a lot of Tesla drivers out there looking drunk over the next couple weeks.

Would that mean a Beta driver whose map details have been incorporated was driving drunk?

 

[Pete90D]

Has anyone else noticed the improvement to A/C? When I drove it this morning it was definitely an improvement on how soon it cooled down. Wondering if it is noticeable to anyone else

 

[nanimac]

Just took my first drive with autosteering and auto lane change. I found it has a hard time recognzing the raised dotted lines here and only recognized the solid lines on the freeway which was pretty much the edge of fast lane and slow lane. So because it doesn't recognize the dotted lane lines, when I when to auto lane change to the lane to the right of the fast lane, it went to the lane and then immediately veered back to the fast lane since it couldn't read the lane lines. Oh sh*t! Scared the hell out of me. It also had a bias to one side at some points though veering pretty close to the edge of the lane a few times.

Overall, it will take some getting used to and there of course there is a lot of improvement that needs to be made for me to truly trust it (even with my hands on the wheel).

 

[S100D]

Is anyone else not charging during the update? Car is plugged in and I really need some mileage while it's downloading, but for some reason it's not charging. Is that typical?

The MS will not charge while the firmware is being updated. This is normal.

 

[Haggy]

Is there a certain order they are releasing the software in? I was one of the first deliveries with autopilot sensors... but that was because I bought before the announcement and just got lucky. Delivered Sept 30th. Another user on here with same exact car make up got delivered the day before with no sensors. So I know I am close to one of the first. I expected to be on of the first to get my software update as well?

My car went into production status on 9/16/14 in the early evening. It's the earliest production date for a Model S with AP that I've seen. My 7.0 update was there by 1:30 am today. With 6.1, people had it for weeks before I did, I was one of the last, and the SC put it on for me when my car was in for something else. Even at that, when the car got there, I was told it wasn't yet available for my car, and it wasn't until I picked up the car that I was told it had changed.

Since I've gotten this one almost as early as possible, and got others almost as late as possible, I'd say that it shows that it could come any time at all.

When you took delivery of the car won't be relevant either, what VIN you have won't be relevant, and at least up to now it hasn't been relevant whether you had AP, AWD, P etc. There were times when it was relevant whether you had a WiFi connection available and other times when people got things over 3G long before others got the same update over WiFi.

It would be nice if there were a way to know how soon it would come, but I'm not sure if one way or another would be more fair to any particular group of owners. It all comes down to logistics and what makes sense from a business and regulatory perspective.

 

[CanadaEV]

Yes, others have noticed the lane change behaviour via the stalk. This seems like a good feature - that you have to intentionally hold the stalk down, either just before making it click, or actually making it click into position. Otherwise, there could be unintentional movement of the stalk, such as inadvertently moving it when intending to move the cruise control lever, or perhaps just hitting it by mistake. Not all that likely, but possible. Causing an unintentional lane change could be serious, in some cases. I like that the system is designed with this kind of caution.

 

[HankLloydRight]

It does, but that doesn't square with the chart by trim level; the 00xxxx car would either be an S60, S85, or P85 without Autopilot, and none of those are reported.

I'm guessing there was a data entry error on the VIN, which seems more likely than a data entry on the AP yes-or-no question.

There's a current issue with the VIN reporting I need to sort out. It's sort of a Y2K problem with VINs, since people are reporting them differently. This will get sorted out today or tomorrow -- in the mean time, some VINs could be reported incorrectly.

 

[CanadaEV]

Tesla should market the update as a dream for new drivers needing to take a license test.

Yeah, but the tester might catch on. lol.

But what about the cops? 'I see you were looking at your cell phone, sir. Please step out of the car.'

'No, officer, you don't understand. This car drives itself...'

'Please step out of the car so I can taser you, sir.'

 

[Max*]

Yeah, but the tester might catch on. lol.

But what about the cops? 'I see you were looking at your cell phone, sir. Please step out of the car.'

'No, officer, you don't understand. This car drives itself...'

'Please step out of the car so I can taser you, sir.'

Autopilot != Autonomous

If the state law is you can't use a cell phone, even if the car drives itself (it doesn't, it's a drivers aid) you can't use your phone. I see the law changing once Level 3 autonomous cars hit the road.

 

[dirkhh]

Getting 7.0

Hrmpf. I may have figured out a way to get the 7.0 update quicker - or maybe it's random coincidence.

To avoid having to click away the update nag screen every day I called Tesla requesting that they please do not push this to my car.
To say that this conversation went nowhere would be a massive understatement. It felt like the person on the phone believed I didn't speak English. Yes, I have an accent, but usually people tell me I'm reasonable coherent and comprehensible. But anyway, the request made no sense to the person I talked to and I believe in the end was deliberately misunderstood as less than 2h later the dreaded "an update is available" popped up on my car. Great, so I'll have to deal with that every day for the foreseeable future.

On the plus side, those in the vast majority here who would like the v7 firmware on their car, maybe this will work for you, too. Just call Tesla and ask them NOT to push the update. Maybe this will have the same marvelous effect for you (and you might actually be happy about it). No guarantees. Just a thought...

OK, maybe that last sentence wasn't entirely serious. Your call.

 

[Haggy]

Yes, others have noticed the lane change behaviour via the stalk. This seems like a good feature - that you have to intentionally hold the stalk down, either just before making it click, or actually making it click into position. Otherwise, there could be unintentional movement of the stalk, such as inadvertently moving it when intending to move the cruise control lever, or perhaps just hitting it by mistake. Not all that likely, but possible. Causing an unintentional lane change could be serious, in some cases. I like that the system is designed with this kind of caution.

I would expect that anybody who brings in a pre-AP Model S for service and gets an AP loaner would be likely to make that mistake. There were only a few weeks during which pre-AP cars were made that had the stalks in the same position as the AP cars. Before that, they were reversed. Likewise, a person with a second Model S, or a Mercedes of certain model years might switch between cars and occasionally hit the wrong stalk.

It would be nice if there were a worldwide standard for where the stalks went, but there isn't. Even the turn signal stalk could be anywhere. I can't say how many times I've turned on my wipers when making a turn in New Zealand or Australia, but I never had that problem in Ireland even though it has right hand drive vehicles. I've occasionally hit the CC stalk on the MS shortly after driving a different car and had it kick in and try to speed me up through a turn.

The good news is that putting on the turn signal shouldn't do anything if somebody is in your blind spot. But if somebody is one lane over and going 25 mph faster than you are, I wouldn't expect the car to be sure what to do.

 

[Max*]

I would expect that anybody who brings in a pre-AP Model S for service and gets an AP loaner would be likely to make that mistake. There were only a few weeks during which pre-AP cars were made that had the stalks in the same position as the AP cars. Before that, they were reversed. Likewise, a person with a second Model S, or a Mercedes of certain model years might switch between cars and occasionally hit the wrong stalk.

It would be nice if there were a worldwide standard for where the stalks went, but there isn't. Even the turn signal stalk could be anywhere. I can't say how many times I've turned on my wipers when making a turn in New Zealand or Australia, but I never had that problem in Ireland even though it has right hand drive vehicles. I've occasionally hit the CC stalk on the MS shortly after driving a different car and had it kick in and try to speed me up through a turn.

The good news is that putting on the turn signal shouldn't do anything if somebody is in your blind spot. But if somebody is one lane over and going 25 mph faster than you are, I wouldn't expect the car to be sure what to do.

The loaners may have it off by default, and require the user to turn on auto-lane change.

 

[anxman]

Hrmpf. I may have figured out a way to get the 7.0 update quicker - or maybe it's random coincidence.

To avoid having to click away the update nag screen every day I called Tesla requesting that they please do not push this to my car.
To say that this conversation went nowhere would be a massive understatement. It felt like the person on the phone believed I didn't speak English. Yes, I have an accent, but usually people tell me I'm reasonable coherent and comprehensible. But anyway, the request made no sense to the person I talked to and I believe in the end was deliberately misunderstood as less than 2h later the dreaded "an update is available" popped up on my car. Great, so I'll have to deal with that every day for the foreseeable future.

On the plus side, those in the vast majority here who would like the v7 firmware on their car, maybe this will work for you, too. Just call Tesla and ask them NOT to push the update. Maybe this will have the same marvelous effect for you (and you might actually be happy about it). No guarantees. Just a thought...

OK, maybe that last sentence wasn't entirely serious. Your call.

This is coincidence. I called my local service center and they said that they don't even have access to the software yet -- let alone the ability to control pushes.

 

[S100D]

Worked fine in 6.2 and 7.0

In 6.2 if TACC was tracking a car in front of me and it stopped, my MS would stop. If TACC was not tracking a car and a car was stopped, my MS would wait until the last second, give a collision warning and slam on the brakes. I never have trusted it to stop the car and have always braked the MS myself.

In the 7.0 release notes, it says that it will recognize stopped cars sooner. With the current 6.2.85 software, I believe that my S85D would run into the car stopped.

 

[Haggy]

I created a profile with seat further back, angled forward and steering out of the way and named it "Exit".
My wife and I drive about as often in the car, so we use this to help switch out to avoid the dreaded "squeeze into seat and press my name to avoid muscle cramps". ;-)

We need a solution that doesn't rely on somebody else remembering to do something. In the past year, I think my wife remembered to do that once. If she forgets, there's no penalty the next time she gets in the car. If it's in my position, she can get into the car and select her own profile. Not tying it to a fob and not fixing this in 7.0 leaves it as one of the two worst features of the center console for me.

Nobody mentioned anything about Homelink, but am I safe to assume that it's as bad as it was before?

- - - Updated - - -

The loaners may have it off by default, and require the user to turn on auto-lane change.

From my experience, loaners have whatever random selection of settings the last user left in the car. That includes a list of about 20 cell phones, a few driver profiles (at least one labeled Elon), sometimes a username for satellite radio, sometimes creep mode, and very often badly mis-set tone controls for the audio system.

 

[dkonigs]

Has anyone else noticed the improvement to A/C? When I drove it this morning it was definitely an improvement on how soon it cooled down. Wondering if it is noticeable to anyone else

This was actually mentioned in the release notes I reviewed this morning when my car updated.
Looking forward to it, since with v6.2 the A/C didn't really work very well (on auto) unless the outside temperature was above some magic threshold.

 

[sandpiper]

Except that we rarely have other planes pass us with in a few feet In the flight levels a 1000 ft vertical separation seems close, and even in my Cub (doing 80kts) a similar slow plane within a few hundred feet is nerve wrecking. In the Tesla, the first time I passed a truck on the interstate - hands of the wheel - was a bit scary!

Yes... but I'm more thinking about IFR approaches. It's a similar in that it's an active situation and you have to be fairly sharp or bad things happen. I usually let my AP fly them for me, but I always keep on hand on the yoke and a close eye on the navigator.... just in case. One time I had glitchy old Century autopilot that decided that it would be fun to initiate an unprompted barrel roll!!!

 

[AudubonB]

Seat position is an asymmetrical problem:

* those leaving it in the Larger Person position do not cause a problem when Smaller Person is the next to drive.
* those leaving it in the Smaller Person position....well, I have to reach into the car, find the Large Screen and hit the AudubonB button just so I can have a seat!


Harrumph.....