First Road Trip - SF Bay Area <-> LA!

[RVD98072]

I just took delivery of my car this past Friday. I was originally going to fly to LA from San Jose but decided that it would be a fun opportunity to get familiarized with the car so I drove instead!

It was a lot of fun. I left at 4pm and so there was a lot of traffic. I think it took me around 3 hours to go 40 miles. Since it was my first time driving, I made a few more supercharger stop than necessary.

I stopped at Gilroy, Harris Ranch, and Tejon Ranch. When I got to LA I had to pick up a friend at the airport so I went to Culver City and supercharged there for a short time while waiting for him.

The experience was awesome! I will admit that I was a little skeptical thinking that stopping every 2-3 hours or so to charge seems like a drag but it was nice getting out to stretch my legs and take a break.

I also played around with autopilot. Like most folks, I was really nervous at first and really untrusting and I'm still not comfortable with it but I thought it was great to play around with it. I mostly turned it on in 2 situations - when it was bumper to bumper stop and go traffic (this is usually when I get really drowsy so AP helped energize me) and when I was on the freeway but not driving too fast (around 70 mph) and there were clear road lines but few cars.

I had a few times when the car didn't really stay in the middle and veered a bit too much for my comfort so I overrode it. I ran some tests on a windy road with no cars and it veered over past the edge a few times as well.

My next road trip is to drive the car home so I'll be driving from the bay area up to Seattle!

 

[Tam]

...a bit too much for my comfort so I overrode it...

My practice is to manually brake if the Autopilot doesn't do so at my normal safe distance and I would manually steer if the Autopilot doesn't steer as I would.

By doing so, the system would be disengaged each time.

And if the system is AI--Artificial Intelligence, it will learn from those disengagements and will do a better job at braking and steering at subsequent firmware updates.

If it's not AI, engineers could still review those disengagements and adjust Autopilot performance as needed.

 

[Skidmark]

AP in traffic is a thing of beauty. AP at freeway speeds on the 5 makes me super drowsy. The supercharger stops are nice, but I wish they didn't change the YogurtLand to a sandwich place at Tejon Ranch. Can't wait for the supercharger to open at Kettleman City so I can have In N Out on the way down.

 

[Tam]

...YogurtLand...

As a consolation prize, there's a Baskin Robins ice cream across the street from Tesla Supercharger--Tejon in the Petro Stopping Center building.

There are only 2 yogurt flavors though:

Fat-Free Vanilla Frozen Yogurt:

and


Maui Brownie Madness® Frozen Yogurt:

 

[dhcp]

As a consolation prize, there's a Baskin Robins ice cream across the street from Tesla Supercharger--Tejon in the Petro Stopping Center building.

There are only 2 yogurt flavors though:

This man knows his fro-yo. This may be one of the more obscure levels of detail I've seen on here in a while, nice!

 

[RVD98072]

My practice is to manually brake if the Autopilot doesn't do so at my normal safe distance and I would manually steer if the Autopilot doesn't steer as I would.

By doing so, the system would be disengaged each time.

And if the system is AI--Artificial Intelligence, it will learn from those disengagements and will do a better job at braking and steering at subsequent firmware updates.

If it's not AI, engineers could still review those disengagements and adjust Autopilot performance as needed.

Interesting. I usually don't use the brakes that much (especially at highway speeds) so I just use the stalk to decrease speed if I see a slowdown coming up although I would use the brake if it was more sudden.

I use the steering wheel override if it veers too much (since i have my hands at the wheel anyway).

I think one time I was in AP, used the turn signal to automatically turn, and then halfway into the lane I turned off the turn signal and the car went crazy and abruptly moved back to my original lane. I guess I wasn't thinking...sometimes when I drive normally I use the turn signal to change lane but turn it off when I'm halfway into the new lane.

 

[BLKMDL3]

This man knows his fro-yo. This may be one of the more obscure levels of detail I've seen on here in a while, nice!