I need to vent - this car is going from bad to worse

[mookhead]

It seems like there is a post like this every few weeks, but I need to vent somewhere.

In the last few days, my $130k car has tried to crash at least once, tried to drift into concrete barriers multiple times, tried to drive into my garage door sills, brake-checked a car behind me multiple times, and lowered itself onto a parking barrier.

I've just about had it with this hot mess.

Specifics (and I'm curious if anyone else has seen these problems):

• During late night drive, with autopilot engaged, I signaled to ask the car to change to the left lane. It started doing so, and about midway through, abruptly changed it mind, swerving dramatically back to the right, OVERSHOOTING my original lane and swinging to the rightmost lane. My hands were on wheel, and I caught it in time. Thankfully, no cars on either side of me, but this could have ended very badly.
• On my daily stop-and-go commute there is a curving onramp. This is 5mph tops. The car will either slowly drift into the concrete barrier, or slowly drift into the other lane. The instrument display diagram shows that it knows it's putting the wheels over the lanes. I've seen other posts complaining about the same thing.
• Summoning the car into my garage (which I do regularly), it decided to swerve to the left at the last second. I barely stopped it in time, with perhaps a quarter inch to spare.
• Multiple times during busy commutes, the car will decide that it has to dramatically slow down (for absolutely no discernible reason - no overpasses, no signs, just car shadows), causing cars behind me to hit the brakes. I drive with my foot near the accelerator, so I've been able to speed out of those situations, but this is extremely dangerous behavior.
• Yesterday after I came down to the parking lot, pull out of my stall, and hear a loud scraping sound. My car had decided to put itself into Jack Mode (I noticed the warning belatedly), and lowered itself onto the concrete parking barrier. Damage to the underside of my nose. This is what finally pissed me off enough to write this post.

I keep my hands on the wheel, my feet near the pedals, and I'm on high alert all the time, because I DON'T TRUST this car. I've filed a bug report for most of these incidents, but I have no confidence that any of it will be addressed. I mean, they can't even keep remember you had your radio muted after you hang up on a phone call, and that bug has been around for years.

If this were any other car, I'd suspect I had a lemon, and work with the company to get the problems resolved, but frankly, I don't know how to proceed here. Living in hope of a firmware fix was fun for a few months, but it's the wrong way for a company to treat its customers.

PS. this is my second Tesla, my third EV, and my 28th car. I knew what I was getting into when I put my MS order a year ago, but come on...

 

[Max*]

I hate to say this, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree, but autopilot is a level 2 system. It's not supposed to work all the time. You, as the driver, are supposed to remain in constant control.

I only have limited experience driving an AP2 car, so I can't comment how good or bad it is. But I'll tell you this about my AP1 car -- after some experience trying out the limitations of AP1, I know exactly where and when I can engage it and expect smooth performance. And under which circumstances I know it'll fail. I have faith when I engage it, but it took a lot of trail and error. Might not be what you're looking for, but AP1/AP2 wont be perfect under all conditions.

During late night drive, with autopilot engaged, I signaled to ask the car to change to the left lane. It started doing so, and about midway through, abruptly changed it mind, swerving dramatically back to the right, OVERSHOOTING my original lane and swinging to the rightmost lane. My hands were on wheel, and I caught it in time. Thankfully, no cars on either side of me, but this could have ended very badly.

If you let go of the turn signal before the car is 1/2 way into the next lane, it'll abruptly shoot back. It shouldn't overshoot though.

Summoning the car into my garage (which I do regularly), it decided to swerve to the left at the last second. I barely stopped it in time, with perhaps a quarter inch to spare.

Summon is listed as "beta" still, I believe. When it works, it works great. When it fails, it fails miserably and could be expensive. I trust it, when I'm watching it and can intervene. There is no way I'd trust summon with me not being inches from the car to stop it.

I mean, they can't even keep remember you had your radio muted after you hang up on a phone call, and that bug has been around for years.

Actually, no. This bug has been introduced in the latest firmware.

It might have been there originally, and then fixed, and then brought back. But I haven't had an issue with this specific problem for 2+ years, until the latest firmware killed it.

 

[Electric700]

Sorry to see you're having all of those problems. I would write to [email protected] about the issues. Perhaps ask for them to review the logs? They will probably need the dates and times of each incident. You could also ask for a service center to take a look. There may be a camera / sensor calibration issue.

 

[jjh1234]

Don't be afraid to use the escalation option on your My Tesla page. I just received a call and email from Tesla about the uncorking issue. I'm approved for the update. The email indicated they are sorry about the delay in getting back to me and that they have expanded the escalation team in order to provide better response times. Hopefully this will be able to help frustrated customers in a more timely fashion. Fingers crossed.

 

[ILLCOMM]

I've just about had it with this hot mess.

I am ~3 weeks in and already understand where you're coming from. I'll speak for myself: my Model S is a classic beta product at a price that's subsidizing future development. Unfortunately, we are ~6 years in and people (rightfully) believe that we'd be further along on getting out of beta. The result is that Tesla has gone from surprise/delight to disappoint, so every little problem used to be washed away by the overwhelming delight, is now amplified by the disappointment of where things actually are. I love Elon as a visionary and innovator, but he nearly singlehandedly has set these expectations. Elon and Tesla *must* deliver soon or goodwill will wane, especially if 500,000 Model 3's disappoint. Forget about theoretical bad feelings, practically speaking 500k more cars with problems at this incidence rate will cripple the company. As it is my service center is booked into mid-November!

All that said, I am pretty happy with my Model S. I find myself liking it more as the days go by, despite this stuff.

 

[mookhead]

I don't expect it to be an L3 system, despite the BS Tesla was selling last November. A competent L2 would be acceptable. But lets be clear: competent L2 requires your intervention when unexpected things happen (car pulls into your lane, or you drive through a puddle, etc). All those things happen, and I expect to, and do, handle them (as an aside, I work in the AI space, and have insight into autonomous driving's limitations, so my bar is low).

Random stopping and swerving isn't "intervention required by unhandled situations". It's "bugs".

BTW, I always click the signal stalk, I don't hold it down (holding it at the detente is too flaky). I enable as much autopilot as possible (pisses my wife off, but like I said, I work in the space - I consider it a black-box experiment), and have gotten pretty good at predicting when I'll need to take over. I'm not complaining about those cases.

This isn't about beta, or occasional regressions. This is about Tesla getting their sh*t together.

I do flag the serious incidents (the swerve, the brake-checks, and the jack mode) using the bug reporting tool, which presumably flags a region in the logs. I'll trying bringing it up at my next service appointment (my roof is whistling like a convertible), but I expect I'll get the same response I got when I complained about Lotus problems: TADTS ("they all do that sir").

 

[speedy]

PS. this is my second Tesla, my third EV, and my 28th car. I knew what I was getting into when I put my MS order a year ago, but come on...

Respectfully, you say this is your 2nd Tesla and that you knew what you were getting into but did you do enough research on Auto Pilot before you bought the car? If you ordered it a year ago, it seems you probably have AP1, which is way more reliable and stable than AP2, but yet your expectations are seemingly not being met. However, your description of the events appear to be more consistent with AP2.

Regardless, did you expect flawless tracking under all conditions or were you aware that this is a beta driver assist feature which requires constant driver attention? If your primary reason for purchasing the car is to take full advantage of the auto pilot features, then I can understand you being very disappointed and it is probably a mismatch of expectations vs features. I, myself, having tested AP1 and read about AP2, chose NOT to purchase EAP yet. Part of my reason is not wanting to pay now for a feature that I may not find acceptable yet, but also because my primary reason for buying the car was to enjoy DRIVING it. I don't regret the decision to save $5k, though there ARE times when I wish I had just the TACC feature. Your reasons for buying the car may have been different, resulting in your different viewpoint and I hope you can find a satisfactory solution....

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Sorry to hear of the mishaps. Probably not the answer you’d like to hear but, it’s best not to use AP anymore or atleast for a while (a couple of years?!); I did that with my arguably more stable and predictable AP1. A couple of swerving incidents and the general brake checking had me and wife grow tired of it as the novelty wore off. Now, I’m just enjoying driving the car the old-fashioned way. My $2.5k towards AP1 is only good for the occasional demo to folks for the wow factor but not on a daily basis.

 

[Tam]

...It's "bugs"...

There is no question about that!

I just learn how to adapt to those Autopilot bugs and I am very happy with it.

I got my hand(s) on the steering wheel with a light torque against the system's automation so I have had no problem of correcting the steering before it got out of hands.

In your case, I would feel it is changing lane but as soon as I feel it goes the wrong way, I would override it by continuing the correct torque direction to finish the lane changing.

You are in charge!

If you let the system in charge (including summon), very BAD things can happen.

The only concern from your post is unintentional Jack Mode. How did it got activated?

 

[AnxietyRanger]

If you ordered it a year ago, it seems you probably have AP1, which is way more reliable and stable than AP2, but yet your expectations are seemingly not being met. However, your description of the events appear to be more consistent with AP2.

What!?!?

Someone ordering a year ago, or even anytime close to a year ago, would have AP2.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

The only concern from your post is unintentional Jack Mode. How did it got activated?

I remember reading about a few unintended Jack modes on TMC some time ago. I had it happen on my Model X once, but it was while it was parked (months ago) and I noticed it after I returned to the car, so just an odd thing I fixed from the screen... Never learned the reason, nor do I know if this might be at all related...

People have had very odd air suspension and other bugs lately, there are several threads of service required etc. on very new cars after a firmware update. Maybe something new...

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I hate to say this, and I'm sure a lot of people will disagree, but this is an autopilot 2 system. It's not supposed to work all the time.

There, I fixed it for you...

 

[YauKwan]

PS. this is my second Tesla, my third EV, and my 28th car. I knew what I was getting into when I put my MS order a year ago, but come on...

It doesnt sound like you knew what you were getting into. Your other EV's did not drive by itself.

AP is good for highways, not local road. All the other features are gimmicks right now. User beware.

 

[Kipernicus]

My air suspension always lowers itself in park. I try not to park over the curb/stop, which is tough because then the sizable rear end hangs out of the parking spot. No worse than those extra long pickup trucks though.

Parking with auto-leveling suspension

 

[bob_p]

The AP2 software isn't ready for prime time - and while there are instances when it works very well, there are also many situations where it responds unexpectedly - and requires a quick override by the driver.

Since AutoSteer, "auto" lane change, summons, ... all require driver interaction to enable, if a driver doesn't have confidence in the software, and isn't prepared to quickly take control when the software makes a mistake, then the driver should use that feature.

It would help if Tesla could provide more detailed information on AP software in each release - such as what they believe they have fixed, the features/conditions that appear to be working well, and the areas where they know or suspect the software isn't yet safe to use.

That would be much better than what we have now - which is typically no documentation on what changes in each release, leaving it to drivers to figure out what is safe to use - every time they get a new release.

Perhaps Tesla could make this clearer by display a "BETA" icon on the dashboard while "beta" features are enabled...

 

[mookhead]

Respectfully, you say this is your 2nd Tesla and that you knew what you were getting into but did you do enough research on Auto Pilot before you bought the car? If you ordered it a year ago, it seems you probably have AP1, which is way more reliable and stable than AP2, but yet your expectations are seemingly not being met. However, your description of the events appear to be more consistent with AP2.

It's an AP2 - I ordered after I saw the AP2 self-driving videos, cuz I'm an idiot. I did a lot of research, which all concluded "don't believe Elon". Like I said, I knew what I was getting into. I still think I have the right to be angry about paying $5k for buggy functionality.

 

[mookhead]

It doesnt sound like you knew what you were getting into. Your other EV's did not drive by itself.

AP is good for highways, not local road. All the other features are gimmicks right now. User beware.

No, of course my other EVs didn't drive themselves. They didn't claim to, and I didn't pay for the feature.

I only use AP on the highway, BTW. I occasionally use TACC on surface streets when I'm feeling lazy. Used AP on surface streets just enough to know not to.

 

[thegruf]

@mookhead - what software verson are you on?

I ask this because I had similarly frustrating issues with AP2 only to find them largely fixed in the next update I received.
If you are on earlier than 17.38 I strongly suggest you try to convince Tesla to push an update or call by an SC if you can.

I have seen reports that 17.40 is improved further for many scenarios.

As for Jack mode - well if the car put itself into Jack mode after you had left it, this should be available from the logs and ask Tesla to review this.

 

[mookhead]

I got my hand(s) on the steering wheel with a light torque against the system's automation so I have had no problem of correcting the steering before it got out of hands.

In your case, I would feel it is changing lane but as soon as I feel it goes the wrong way, I would override it by continuing the correct torque direction to finish the lane changing.

This is exactly how I drive. I take over many times during my commute (and consider it normal to do so), for everything from lane drift corrections to moving aside for lane-splitting motorcycles. If I didn't drive this way, you'd be reading "Tesla Drives Itself Into Roadside Barrier" and "Tesla Experts Interpret Tesla Logs Showing Tesla is Yet Again Not at Fault" headlines, not my ranty post.

 

[mookhead]

If you are on earlier than 17.38 I strongly suggest you try to convince Tesla to push an update or call by an SC if you can.

I'm on 17.40. It did get a bit better, especially the lane changes. All the problems I listed happened post .40, fwiw.