My first autopilot experience this w/e. I just happened to have planned a couple of days away at a resort 4 hours drive from home - so thanks Tesla for releasing the software just ahead of this! (In reality they may have considered the fact that releasing before a weekend would give people the chance for some immediate fun).
The experience was overall extremely positive. We know the technology is brand new and the auto steer is even marked as "beta", so clearly flagged as being still a little raw. Nevertheless, driving on multi-lane highways and even somewhat windy single-lane main roads was generally great. The oddities I experienced were:
1. Several incidents of abrupt and incorrect steering at lane widening ahead of the appearance of a left-turn lane. The car tended to move away from the right lane boundary and was suddenly confronted with the lane divider line where there left-turn lane was suddenly marked, at the point where the main lane had grown to the width of two. The car invariably decided to leap into the left-turn lane, rather than continuing to hug the right lane boundary and continue on the main road. The abruptness of this maneuver was very jarring and I had to quickly manually steer to the right. The drivers of the cars behind must have had a little cuss.
2. On my return journey on a multi-lane highway, I was in the right-hand lane and noticed that the vehicle had not detected the overtaking lane to the left. It continued not to see this lane and therefore automatic lane changing (for overtaking) was not available. I'm not sure why it failed to detect the other lane, as I had seen that working fine before. The lane dividers were fairly widely spaced white dashes (but seemed to be to be quite 'normal' for a fast highway). The light conditions were cloudy and perhaps not so bright, but all the other functions of auto-steer were working just fine.
3. At higher speeds cornering was a bit 'off'. I noticed that at a moderate bend to the left, at a highish but still normal speed at which I was take the corner, auto-steer would hug to the left lane divider/centerline, even touching a wheel on it. This is despite there seeming to be able room in the lane to the right. I can't remember whether the vehicle was detecting a barrier to the right of the road at the time, but it did this several times on a left bend.
I know we have other features coming.
I would love there to be a speed limit tracking option for the cruise speed. At least chime and set the proposed new speed, giving the driver a chance to veto or change this before executing the actual speed change in the cruise setting.
Definitely traffic light/intersection detection would be awesome. Though in practice at the moment, you would be slowing down from highway speeds (where you are most likely to be using autopilot) before you get to any traffic lights.
I wonder why the GPS route isn't used when possible to figure out appropriate limits on the speeds to take corners (comfortably - and/or in the envelope that auto-steer can handle). I believe there are vehicles that now use GPS route data to do gear selection for corners. AFAICT, the Tesla autopilot is not altering it's cornering behaviour at all based on anything (sometimes there are yellow speed signs posted ahead of corners, which might also be a clue, though these can be widely off the mark as to what is actually comfortably possible in a good vehicle).