How is .40/.42 AP2 doing for you?

[Doug_G]

Massive move of posts to snippiness...

Some of this is way over the line. Additional sanctions may be forthcoming if behavior does not improve.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@Carl My usage of Model X and latest firmware updates happened exactly as I described them. I've had .40, what two weeks now. I haven't driven anywhere far, except that one time. I could fill you on the details of my schedule why that is, but I don't think that should be necessary. I was describing the overall circumstances accurately, I think that should be fair enough IMO.

Re: privacy. I guess we all choose a level we're comfortable with. Not that I'm trying to be competely private or anything (I openly shared my Model X Signature reservation number for example - it was in my signature for years, some know me here more and I know some more). I respect people sharing to the extent they wish and stick to that myself as well. I think that's fair on the Internet.

To respect @Doug_G's word, this will be my last message in this thread until I have actual new experiences to report of .40 and beyond.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

OK, got .42 and took a little detour on a motorway to check it out and for the sake of this thread.

I can report the lane-keeping on that stretch of motorway - really just a couple of kilometers - was solid. Not better or worse than .36 on the road trip, just, well, solid.

It did ghost brake mildly on an overpass (going under a bridge), though. I believe the ghost braking issue is more related to the radar algorithms at this stage, so it may not have anything to do with the new NN.

In any case, still piling on my reports of .36 and .40, this feels good progress. Admittedly still very limited experience on .40/42.

 

[Bebop]

Is anyone having issues of the car literally not stopping with a car stopped in front of you?

There would be a red light and a car stopped in front of the light. Instead of the car slowing down and detecting the stopped car coming up ahead, it keeps going full speed. I’ve had to slam on the brakes on several occasions because I got the impression the car wasn’t going to stop at all and crash the bumper of the stopped car.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Is anyone having issues of the car literally not stopping with a car stopped in front of you?

There would be a red light and a car stopped in front of the light. Instead of the car slowing down and detecting the stopped car coming up ahead, it keeps going full speed. I’ve had to slam on the brakes on several occasions because I got the impression the car wasn’t going to stop at all and crash the bumper of the stopped car.

You have HW2.5, I assume. Perhaps it is still more careful about when to apply the brakes due to its new radar?

@verygreen Does EAP even do any kind of visual car identification at this stage? Could it merely use radar for car identification on seeing them on the lanes? Maybe that would explain by the IC does not differentiate yet...

 

[buttershrimp]

Massive move of posts to snippiness...

Some of this is way over the line. Additional sanctions may be forthcoming if behavior does not improve.

You have HW2.5, I assume. Perhaps it is still more careful about when to apply the brakes due to its new radar?

@verygreen Does EAP even do any kind of visual car identification at this stage? Could it merely use radar for car identification on seeing them on the lanes? Maybe that would explain by the IC does not differentiate yet...

yep common currently on ap2 for me.... getting better, but clearly hard for the system at this point.

 

[buttershrimp]

@Carl My usage of Model X and latest firmware updates happened exactly as I described them. I've had .40, what two weeks now. I haven't driven anywhere far, except that one time. I could fill you on the details of my schedule why that is, but I don't think that should be necessary. I was describing the overall circumstances accurately, I think that should be fair enough IMO.

Re: privacy. I guess we all choose a level we're comfortable with. Not that I'm trying to be competely private or anything (I openly shared my Model X Signature reservation number for example - it was in my signature for years, some know me here more and I know some more). I respect people sharing to the extent they wish and stick to that myself as well. I think that's fair on the Internet.

To respect @Doug_G's word, this will be my last message in this thread until I have actual new experiences to report of .40 and beyond.

How bout a 200 mile road trip? Get out there and pound some miles!

 

[AnxietyRanger]

How bout a 200 mile road trip? Get out there and pound some miles!

Got to love the accountability on this forum! Your balance on it is allright @buttershrimp, keep up the good participation.

By the way my road trip on the .36 was around 200 miles on Autopilot. I had done a big portion of the same trip on an earlier version of Autopilot and it was too unpleasant to use (hugging lanes, ghost brakings, steering anomalies). But on .36 it was nice. I was positively surprised.

I do that trip a few times a year, so I will get to do a re-run sooner rather than later (sometimes I do it on an ICE though for practical reasons, I don't always have the time to charge). Actually, that road is one big reason I wanted Autopilot. If one day AP2 could provide a Level 3 experience for that motorway stretch, I would be over the moon. It would really be a big deal for me. Much more important for me than getting some pseudo-FSD for my short commute.

 

[buttershrimp]

We are driving vastly different roads I think... taking an Ice would be so impractical, it would be horrible... I can't imagine driving distance without autopilot any more... it's very annoying when I get a stretch of road that I can't reliably engage because of hills and narrow twisty lanes, but otherwise, it's dreamy. You really do sound like you could use many many more miles of autopilot. .... .40 for me was a big step forward, .42 has not been tight... but I'll do another 100-200 miles tomorrow.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

We are driving vastly different roads I think... taking an Ice would be so impractical, it would be horrible...

I get your point, and I like the question so I hope the thread doesn't mind me answering/pondering it. I think the main thing is, sometimes I need to get to where I need to get to more than I need to enjoy the drive - stress about charging or range anxiety are enjoyment killers also (let alone impatient passengers), but most of all these points make them sometimes impractical. If there is some meeting or engagement that I need to take part in with flexibility and time constraints, ICE is still often the way to do it without undue risks.

This also plays into my thinking of when to buy more BEVs. I'm constantly thinking of when the plunge would be realistic. Do I need ICE? For what and for how long? Frankly, I don't know. Or put it this way: I know I could get by with BEV only (as you know, my daily needs are modest), but overall it would demand sacrifices I'm probably not yet ready for. I have been driving a BEV daily driver since 2014 - before any Superchargers in my range, so I've made sacrifices in order to drive it...

But it is a constant struggle in my mind where to draw the line. I'm a tech-geek, so on my own time I love the challenge, but I'm not always on solely my own time. Charging networks are improving, but likely won't improve - for me - to the extent needed in the next 2-3 years to remove all obstacles... Truth be told, some near-future trips would not be taken at all, if I didn't have an ICE alternative, and that's something I'm not quite ready to give away yet. Renting or borrowing a car, realistically, I can't see myself doing that. The trips just wouldn't happen or would take significantly longer on public transport.

Here's how I see the immediate future, I think my next car purchase will be replacing my ICE with a BEV once more large-battery options emerge, once I can answer the above question sufficiently positively. Maybe it will be that I-Pace on the signature or maybe it will be something else a bit later. This will already be a significant compromise with some repercussions, but maybe I could get by if I still had one ICE in the fleet as a backup for two BEVs, for those longer summer road trips and the occasional meeting out of practical range.

 

[croman]

My experience is .42 is vastly better than anything else Tesla has pushed. It was vastly better than .41.5 (which I'd never even seen) which was on my 100D HW2.5 loaner (the maroney sticker indicated build date 7/2017).

@AnxietyRanger - you'll be pleased to note that the blue car has almost entirely disappeared. Even giant intersections no longer rely on blue car. It visually tracks the lead car and can see the lane lines through the intersection. Even giant 6 lane ones (brief blue car blip once in over a week). I used to see the infamous blue cars20+ times a day through intersections.

It is so rock solid that I am very bullish on EAP coming around in Q1 2018. I can sense it.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Well, well, well, what do you know, I actually drove AP2 half an hour (out of roughly one hour's drive) today! Here's my report. This was the .42 version. Unfortunately these roads did not include my usual testing motorway, which has its issues in the past, but still a divere set of roads.

First the bad:

- IC did not show blue cars or cars on other lanes (and I did not use lane change). Also there does not seem to be proper visual recognition of where cars are turning (or it is a poor one), since some cars were turning left, yet their graphic on the IC was showing a car moving towards the left, but tilted towards the opposite direction (right).

- Local roads (I guess some call them surface streets) were just as unreliable as before, but to give it a fair chance, I did try it as many times as possible. So no, where I drive, these are out of the question. I wouldn't have tried either, unless I felt pressured by peer-pressure on TMC to do stupid things.

Then the average:

- Wide lanes caused disengagements. It just lost the sight of the lane when it was wider than normal, even though markings were clear and the road unambiguous. But these are rare, so.

- Bias on the lane was more uneven than before, perhaps 40-60 split instead of 50-50 split. Oddly this changed from side to side. Also this was correctly reflected on the IC, so the car did know it was biased towards one side or the other. I did not find any logic to this.

- There was ever so slight zig-zagging going on, nothing like the ping-ponging of early AP2 versions, but you could feel the steering wheel swaying a little.

Finally the good:

- Other than those minor niggles, it was really good on divided roads in a wide range of speeds. I found it pleasant even in stop-and-go traffic, usually a sore spot that has caused too many disengagements to be worth it before. All in all, very useful on divided roads.

This adds to my pleasant experiences with .36, .40 and now .42. I am cautiously optimistic things are finally going somewhere.

 

[lunitiks]

It is so rock solid that I am very bullish on EAP coming around in Q1 2018. I can sense it.

That card!!! OMG I used to play that crap

 

[cartwright]

Is anyone having issues of the car literally not stopping with a car stopped in front of you?

There would be a red light and a car stopped in front of the light. Instead of the car slowing down and detecting the stopped car coming up ahead, it keeps going full speed. I’ve had to slam on the brakes on several occasions because I got the impression the car wasn’t going to stop at all and crash the bumper of the stopped car.

Yes, I've had that happen a couple of times as well. (AP2.5, .42)

 

[Joe F]

- IC did not show blue cars or cars on other lanes (and I did not use lane change).

FWIW, I've not seen a blue car to date, and it's been 10 months. Perhaps a good thing, perhaps better road markings. Maybe it's I watch the road instead of the IC. Blue lane lines, but never a blue car.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

FWIW, I've not seen a blue car to date, and it's been 10 months. Perhaps a good thing, perhaps better road markings. Maybe it's I watch the road instead of the IC. Blue lane lines, but never a blue car.

The reason I bring it up was because the first time my AP2 opinion credentials were doubted, it was because I too had not seen the blue car until I started looking for it very recently.

Then it turned out there are a lot of people like me, who had never seen it. And some were saying they see it 10 times a day. I think we nailed it down to the circumstances: it needed low-speed, lead car, surface street, no lane markings situations to show on AP2, which was something that I never was able to use AP2 in - normally - anyway due to the nature of the roads I drive and AP2 on them...

 

[AnxietyRanger]

The blue car conversation is around here:

Move Over Tesla. Here Comes Cadillac. around #401...

 

[Joe F]

The blue car conversation is around here:

Move Over Tesla. Here Comes Cadillac. around #401...

Ah, thanks. I've not followed that thread beyond the first page or 2 because, well, Cadillac.

My use case makes sense WRT why I've never seen a blue lead car. I rarely use AS on local roads beyond one stretch after a new release is installed as a test. Bad experience early on that I tend to shy away from

Might be time to try .42 on my loop test road again.

 

[croman]

Ah, thanks. I've not followed that thread beyond the first page or 2 because, well, Cadillac.

My use case makes sense WRT why I've never seen a blue lead car. I rarely use AS on local roads beyond one stretch after a new release is installed as a test. Bad experience early on that I tend to shy away from

Might be time to try .42 on my loop test road again.

Still exercise caution. It will not do well on certain local roads in my experience (and I have a lot) but its night and day different from the earlier versions. It is no longer confused by shadows since the new NN came or overhanging branches. It can handle turns (though S turns it inexplicably will wander across double yellows (even though it made the S)). But its where it should've been all along when it was released. Someone competent is clearly now at the helm. It shocks me that Lattner was unable to accomplish this and Tesla let it get along that much. Bugs indeed!

 

[croman]

I believe the reason the blue car no longer appears is because the NN sees the lane lines even after the intersection interruption. It doesn't need to follow the lead car to do it. It now zips straight through without the previous desire to stray left into concrete dividers). Curved intersections with painted curved intermittent lines success rate 25% now. It works sometimes but not often (It will veer into the other lane or go in a diagonal (both require immediate takeover so I have no idea what it would do if left alone but as @jimmy_d posited, perhaps it would somehow recover)).

RR tracks aren't an issue anymore. Minor hills don't result in it jerking the wheel blindly staggering across lane lines. To me, they've addressed a lot of issues all at once with the local AP. The issues remaining are functionality based: No ALC on local roads (even above 31mph). No multiple lane IC (which seems to be tied to ALC). Note: around me the areas where ALC/highway AP has been available has gradually expanded since March, so in effect, local roads became highways to Tesla. This became somewhat different when TomTom took over whatever role was previously played by another vendor.