Going backwards...

[MrBadger]

In my naivety, I had expected this super duper, all singing all dancing car (as apposed to the adjacent dancing cars) to have some form of mechanism to prevent you from reversing into things. But even though this is common place in many current cars, now I am not so sure - argued by some as being too Level 1 autonomy - sigh...

I believe that rear camera has distance display, but call me old fashioned, I prefer to look in the mirrors when reversing so don't want to look at the display. Our current cars have audible beepers when the bumper sensors detect objects.

Can someone please

• let me know if an audible rear warning when reversing
• give some indication of field of view available from rear facing camera - when it works. The particular use case that I am interested in is when reversing out of a parking space when someone parked next to you with a big SUV type thing.

I'm not even going to bother to ask if it applies the brakes before hitting something when reversing. Or if auto park works with diagonal parking spaces.

thanks

 

[pmg102]

Manual page 67...

“Controlling Audible Feedback

You can use Park Assist with or without audible feedback. To turn chimes on or off, touch Controls > Safety & Security > Park Assist Chimes.

To mute the chimes temporarily, press the scroll button on the left side of the steering wheel or touch the mute button in the corner of the Park Assist view. The chimes are muted until you shift into a different gear or drive over 8 km/h.”

 

[jebinc]

Can someone please

• 1) let me know if an audible rear warning when reversing
• 2) give some indication of field of view available from rear facing camera - when it works. The particular use case that I am interested in is when reversing out of a parking space when someone parked next to you with a big SUV type thing.

I'm not even going to bother to ask 3) if it applies the brakes before hitting something when reversing. Or if auto park works with diagonal parking spaces.

thanks

Well, I'll take a stab at it....

1) Not that I have found (only from side obstructions, like garage door frame). See two V10 threads where Telsa vs other OEM (e.g., Subaru) systems are discussed.
2) When parked next to tall trucks/SUVs, etc., I find myself longing for the rear cross traffic alert "basic" feature that most other brands offer.
3) No, See two V10 threads where Telsa vs other OEM (e.g., Subaru) systems are discussed.

Beware of FSD zealots who are lurking; just waiting to defend the "Elon is a demigod," "What ever Tesla offers is the best," and lastly, FSD will solve all of your problems" mantra - ignoring the fact that some may actually want to drive their car (safely) some part of the time when in it, and that FSD/Autopilot is currently either in Beta or a "promise" at this point.

 

[Ludalicious]

In my naivety, I had expected this super duper, all singing all dancing car (as apposed to the adjacent dancing cars) to have some form of mechanism to prevent you from reversing into things. But even though this is common place in many current cars, now I am not so sure - argued by some as being too Level 1 autonomy - sigh...

I believe that rear camera has distance display, but call me old fashioned, I prefer to look in the mirrors when reversing so don't want to look at the display. Our current cars have audible beepers when the bumper sensors detect objects.

Can someone please

• let me know if an audible rear warning when reversing
• give some indication of field of view available from rear facing camera - when it works. The particular use case that I am interested in is when reversing out of a parking space when someone parked next to you with a big SUV type thing.

I'm not even going to bother to ask if it applies the brakes before hitting something when reversing. Or if auto park works with diagonal parking spaces.

thanks

Unless you owned a vehicle prior to the model 3... You sir have no idea how much progress Tesla has made over the last 2-3 years. Tesla has made massive improvements through the years. Get back to us in 2-3 years from now.

 

[-DB-]

Manual page 67...

“Controlling Audible Feedback

You can use Park Assist with or without audible feedback. To turn chimes on or off, touch Controls > Safety & Security > Park Assist Chimes.

To mute the chimes temporarily, press the scroll button on the left side of the steering wheel or touch the mute button in the corner of the Park Assist view. The chimes are muted until you shift into a different gear or drive over 8 km/h.”

*Wonders how long it took to memorise M3 Manual*

On a serious note, is the manual correct?

 

[-DB-]

360 degree view and rear cross traffic should be available considering the tech in this car. Surely they would be fairly easy to develop compared to the other stuff they have achieved.

 

[MrBadger]

Manual page 67...

“Controlling Audible Feedback

You can use Park Assist with or without audible feedback. To turn chimes on or off, touch Controls > Safety & Security > Park Assist Chimes.

To mute the chimes temporarily, press the scroll button on the left side of the steering wheel or touch the mute button in the corner of the Park Assist view. The chimes are muted until you shift into a different gear or drive over 8 km/h.”

It talks about chimes - does not mention if chime imparts urgency or closing distance. Our current cars vary the tone depending on how close you are to an object - as a result, you can safely get close to objects. then less safely, get a bit closer still. A chime implies a single note - ie you are close to an object (which I would probably already have sussed) rather than any feedback wrt distance.

 

[animorph]

Sure, the car beeps at me lots of times when I'm backing out of the garage. It tells me the distance to the object. It says "Stop" when I get closer than 12". I usually back out using mostly the rear camera, checking the side mirrors occasionally, and checking the distance measurements if it's beeping at me. And I keep a close eye on anything the sensors might not be picking up.

The field of view from the camera is not super wide. Faster cross-traffic would be hard to catch. It won't show cars parked next to you unless you are parked well in front of them. The side mirrors work fine for seeing the sides. They can be automatically adjusted any way you want while in reverse. And the ultrasonic sensors are working on the sides as well. I pull into a few garages that require me to fold my mirrors in order to fit through the opening. I usually open the side mirrors while I'm backing out until they are close to the garage door, when I fold them back in. Works fine for me.

 

[Artiste]

360 degree view and rear cross traffic should be available considering the tech in this car. Surely they would be fairly easy to develop compared to the other stuff they have achieved.

The M3 doesn’t have these features? And the Tesla aficionados on this forum have been assuring me that the M3 is sooooo far ahead of the competition that there’s nothing else in sight. . . . .

There’s some pretty basic stuff missing here.

 

[-DB-]

The M3 doesn’t have these features? And the Tesla aficionados on this forum have been assuring me that the M3 is sooooo far ahead of the competition that there’s nothing else in sight. . . . .

There’s some pretty basic stuff missing here.

Not yet unfortunatly, can't understand why.

 

[Peteski]

The M3 doesn’t have these features? And the Tesla aficionados on this forum have been assuring me that the M3 is sooooo far ahead of the competition that there’s nothing else in sight. . . . .

There’s some pretty basic stuff missing here.

Tesla is a bit of a paradox. In many major respects (like the drivetrain, UI, OTA connectivity) they are miles ahead. But some relatively basic features are poor or completely missing.

The lack of a 360 degree parking view was a minor shock for me too when I first realised they don't have it. I put it down to being so far up their own asses with "FSD" that they considered it a redundant feature. Same goes for a HUD too, although I'm not so hung up on those.

So having lived without a 360 surround view with my Model X, I do still really wish it had one. It's a beast of a thing to park and you can see very little of the extremities from the driver's seat. The rear camera view is pretty good for reversing and the huge display helps a lot too. But having to use door mirrors to see where the rear wheels are relative to a kerb is not as nice as using a decent surround view. Of course you just have to guess where the front wheels are! The bumper sensors are pretty good and you do get a nice contour map view with indicated distance to objects and typical audible beeps which become a solid tone when you get to around 12" away. So at least there are no issues there. But unfortunately it does allow you to reverse into objects if you ignore the warnings, even though it would be quite capable of stopping (as it does when auto parking for example). Speaking of auto parking, it actually works fairly well in limited scenarios and can be genuinely useful at times. But obviously that feature now requires £6k worth of FSD, so I won't have it on my M3.

Oh and people have been lobbying Tesla for surround cam view for years with no success. It's probably one of the most requested features ever. At one point I thought it was actually happening, but it was only the pathetic and totally useless "dancing car" zoomed AP display!

 

[MrBadger]

My query about what it can see is answered with these two posts from the Model 3 10.0 upgrade thread.

I'm still trying to get my head around the camera angles in the YouTube video - a second near identical car is confusing my own neural network. Worth a look.

The pillar cameras generally face forward so aren't much use for backing up.



Indeed, it does seem pretty wide - a lot wider than the picture suggests - though I don't think it is any wider than it was before, you definitely can see the plate. I remember seeing the top of the trunk lid in the corners before, and it seems that I can still see the same amount of those.

The concern I have is this, though:

Initially, when backing up, the car will be able to see traffic on either side. (A lot more angle than I thought.) But as it backs up further, it will tend to have larger and larger blindspots! Obviously physically not possible to see around the rear bumper edges (and lacks a couple degrees before that as you can see, at least on one side, for me).

So a little different than I thought - it's not what it initially sees that is the issue - it's whether it can continue to see. I'm not sure how the car is going to get around this unless it remembers what it sees. At some point it'll be far enough out that other cameras can see, but that will lead to a significant period where it can't see traffic.

I'm not convinced that parking nose out will help much though. First, the radar will have limitations on field of view as well. Probably more so than the backup camera. So it will suffer from the increasing blindness problem as well. The only benefit I can see to parking nose out is that the cameras will become helpful earlier; for coming out forwards, you "only" have to come as far as the windshield (when the wide angle front camera will become useful). While for backing out, the only other cameras facing in the right direction for backing out are on the front quarter panels! You have to come out a long way before they are useful! (It's even possible the pillar cameras might be useful first, depending on the situation with blocking vehicles.)

Posting a couple pictures to show how wide the angle is. You can see in the second and third pictures about what you can see...car is sitting about 18 inches in front of the cement line of the edge of the garage.
View attachment 435631
View attachment 435632
View attachment 435633

@verygreen uploaded a video of this exact scenario, pulling out of a parking spot backwards with footage from the cameras including the backup, repeaters, and pillar cams.

My worry is the obscuring of the backup camera, especially in the rain (or snow). Not sure how the car will be able to back out when the camera looks like this:

 

[Peteski]

It talks about chimes - does not mention if chime imparts urgency or closing distance. Our current cars vary the tone depending on how close you are to an object - as a result, you can safely get close to objects. then less safely, get a bit closer still. A chime implies a single note - ie you are close to an object (which I would probably already have sussed) rather than any feedback wrt distance.

On my X (should be the same on M3) I'm not sure if the audible beeps get faster or louder or both as you approach an object (will check next time I'm in the car), but when you get very close (around 12") it changes to a continuous warning tone. But I find myself using the very nice on-screen contour mapping, with the audible beeps as a secondary warning. The continuous tone always gets my attention too! There are basically no issues with the sensors, they are as good as anything else I've seen from BMW, Volvo etc. It's the missing surround camera view that lets it down. The one you get on the latest Volvos is perfect. Just needs the same and then it would be even better on the larger Tesla screen.

 

[Artiste]

Tesla is a bit of a paradox. In many major respects (like the drivetrain, UI, OTA connectivity) they are miles ahead. But some relatively basic features are poor or completely missing.

The lack of a 360 degree parking view was a minor shock for me too when I first realised they don't have it.

The frustrating thing is that the hardware is already in place. Multiple cameras are used for dash cam and sentry mode and it shouldn’t be at all difficult to implement 360 degree parking view. If it’s one of the most requested features then perhaps it’ll be included with V10 software update, though I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. Here’s hoping!

 

[Mark_T]

The frustrating thing is that the hardware is already in place.

I'm not so sure that the current camera locations are actually all that useful.

They don't cover enough of the ground close to the car to offer the same sort of 360 downward view you get with some other cars.

In my Nissan which had the 360 view it used two downward facing cameras under the wing mirrors to get the clear view of the wheels in relation to the kerb, I don't think Tesla has anything pointing that far down... ?

 

[Artiste]

I'm not so sure that the current camera locations are actually all that useful.

They don't cover enough of the ground close to the car to offer the same sort of 360 downward view you get with some other cars.

In my Nissan which had the 360 view it used two downward facing cameras under the wing mirrors to get the clear view of the wheels in relation to the kerb, I don't think Tesla has anything pointing that far down... ?

My M3 is still a distant dream so I really don’t know, but I suspect you may be right. Even so, any view from the cameras would be better than no view at all!

 

[Peteski]

The frustrating thing is that the hardware is already in place. Multiple cameras are used for dash cam and sentry mode and it shouldn’t be at all difficult to implement 360 degree parking view. If it’s one of the most requested features then perhaps it’ll be included with V10 software update, though I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. Here’s hoping!

This has been discussed at length on the S/X forums. As @Mark_T says, I don't believe the cameras lend themselves to easily compiling a 360 surround view. If it was easy I'm fairly sure they would have done it by now as it's been requested for years. I very much doubt they would add further cameras specifically for this feature. I've pretty much given up expecting it to happen, but it's far from a show-stopper. Overall I would still rather drive a Tesla than anything else currently on the market, EV or ICE.