With v7/Autopilot now released, I wanted to revisit my original post to see how things turned out comparatively:
- Autopilot is very close to ready - i did not press for more specifics. They were unaware of Elons comments about the 405 or whatever highway with faded white lines and light concrete.
Well, it was about 2.5 months later that it got released. So apparently it wasn’t that close to ready. Perhaps Elon decided to hold things up while they worked on faded lines and the like…
- To that end, there is consideration that the system may talk to the mothership to know areas where autopilot can't be relied upon, so the car will give the driver notice in advance - "you are approaching an area where autopilot cannot function reliably, prepare to take control" (my words based on this persons comments)
Yep, Elon went into some detail about how this crowd sourced data is going to benefit all Tesla drivers. It seems several instances of the ‘nag’ that people (including myself) have faced could in fact be the ‘autopilot cannot function reliably’ message in another form (albeit it is too soon for it to be because of lessons learned from other drivers).
- Having seen a situation where a 110km speed sign was read as 10k by the car, I mentioned this to this person. They were quite shocked this happened. They did confirm the intention is that the system will automatically adjust the speed of the car (as seen in the initial demonstration, and as an improvement to the current "set cruise to speed" function we have now).
Since we don’t have the speed auto adjusting, I have to believe they have seen issues with speed sign recognition, as I mentioned. It should be noted that Tesla has been improving the speed sign recognition, there are confirmed cases where a sign that used to cause issues now registers correctly.
- I suggested/asked if the system had a threshold - don't adjust speed if delta is greater than x. That is not part of the system, but they were intrigued by the idea.
Since they don’t adjust speed, this is still a wait-and-see item.
- I asked if the car 'tells' tesla when a speed sign is 'ignored' by the driver, ie that the car detected it wrong. No such communication happens.
Similar to last two points, too early to know much. With Elon’s recent statements about the cars sending back info, it is reasonable to believe this may be included, but that is just speculation.
- In stop and go traffic, the system is reliable enough that the driver could be distracted while driving and still be safe (not saying this is a good thing or the intention!). This individual gave examples of doing tasks very not related to driving, and having nothing untoward result.
So far, every indication is that this is correct. Several reports of reasonably long distance travel without a nag or incident supports that in certain situations, the car is more ‘autonomous’ than not. Of course, since situations can change in an instant, drivers still need to stay alert.
- There appears to be a bit of 'debate' within Tesla over how much the car should pester the driver to stay focused on driving. A 'new' feature just put into the software recently goes quite far towards pestering. This individual really disliked it, and was trying to get it reverted. It has to do with, and is in stark contrast to some statements Elon made a while back. I joked "the lawyers must be getting involved" and the response I got was a slight chuckle. We all will hope this individual gets this change reverted (but I am not so sure Tesla as a company will revert it)
As above, in many instances, there is no nag. Often times, the nag is less a nag and more a notice that intervention is required for safe travelling. However, I have experienced what I would call a nag… taking a long curve (not too tight, but length) on a highway, with cars around, AFTER completing the curve, the car twice (once in each direction) asked to grab the wheel. The second time I refused. After a few warnings (about 30 seconds apart), the car slowed down. However, autosteer remained on, and TACC remained active (as indicated by the icon lit in the dash). So long as the accelerator was used to maintain speed, I was able to keep driving hands free. However, after about 2 minutes of constant beeping (rather annoying beeping), I have in and moved the wheel slightly. This was all it took to make the car happy, and TACC took over again. Since it went on for 2 minutes, and since the car never showed any signs of having difficulty, I consider this a nag. Granted, I was then able to drive nag free for ~20 minutes.
- I brought up Elon mentioning sensor suite 2. This person confirmed that more sensors are needed for autonomous driving. No surprise. Did not ask about the Model S seen with additional cameras.
Elon’s comments yesterday about the coming ability to recognize traffic lights and stop signs was ambiguous, but it seemed like it applied to the current sensor suite, so there could still be improvements to be seen with the original sensor suite. He did reaffirm that more sensors would be needed for autonomous driving.
- Some discussion was had about laws - Tesla is keenly aware that autonomous features in cars are a grey area, that laws are typically not in place about them, and Tesla wants to implement it to be safe enough that laws don't need to get written, with the fear being that when government writes such laws, they will be too overboard on safety and will prevent features.
There have been suggestions that even the current abilities of the car are running into issues with the law. I can’t recount the source, but there was something published that the car will behave differently in regions so as to comply with their road rules. Also, Elon stated the rollout of v7 to Europe was going to be a smidge later, as they needed some regulatory approval.
- I mentioned having owned an Infiniti Q50 for a short time - "oh, the car that ping pongs between the lanes"... this person knew about the car. It was mentioned the team has a Merc S Class, and that is the benchmark they are trying to beat. There was confidence implied that they had beat the S Class in lane keeping.
Elons response to why Tesla’s autopilot was better than the competitors was answered mostly with a reference to the ability the cars have to communicate with each other (in a sense). No competitor has anything like that ability.
- No discussion about self parking - I mean, this person got out of the car and it parked itself next to the Supercharger, but I wasn't about to point out that we all saw that (just kidding)
Well we got parallel parking. Apparently more abilities are coming in v7.1 (with no set timeframe given yet0.
- This person mentioned it was much more relaxing driving in autopilot mode. Something said to the effect of 'if you are tired, you still are able to monitor the car just fine (autopilot on), whereas you might not be as able to drive the car safely (autopilot off)'. Again, I don't think this individual nor tesla (nor I) advocate driving a car with autopilot when you shouldn't be/when you wouldn't be able to safely drive a car without autopilot.
Driving on the highway/freeway in AP is certainly a pleasure. Driving on random city roads are hit and miss, but there absolutely are situations where driver intervention is needed in a hurry.
- I asked if I could see v7 which was running in the car, after a quick 'thought' ('yes' was not immediate), I was let in the drivers seat - it was made VERY clear not to try to take any pictures. I was very surprised to be allowed to sit down.
- The person did almost all of the interaction, except when I asked to press CONTROLS once (this was out of respect, but it seemed like this person would have been ok with me pressing buttons at will)
- I didn't think to press the T to see version number
- As talked about on here (TMC), it is the dark/flat look that was in the demo cars at the D launch.
This is indeed the case.
- I was a bit overwhelmed, and didn't take too many mental notes about the specific looks. Icons were less cartooney.
This is indeed the case.
- There is less contrast between the background and the text/icons - sun was shining brightly on the screen, and even the individual had trouble making out the bottom row of buttons (settings, temp, etc).
This is indeed the case. That said, I didn’t have issues with visibility thus far with the sun. Contrast between elements on the screen may have been tweaked from what I saw (tough to recall).
- The layout exactly mimics what we have - everything is in same place on the 17" screen
Indeed the case.
- There is a new icon indicating charge port is open
I actually haven’t checked this myself yet.
- On a very quick pass through, the CONTROLS screen seemed to be the same. The individual jumped through some pages, I didn't notice anything, but certainly may have missed items.
- It was implied that there were not any BIG new features - I did not see an APPS icon for instance - and it is still the same 2 open windows layout. This relates to my perception the person would have let me press buttons at will - in that there wasn't anything present they thought needed to be hidden.
Aside from the clock and individual tire pressure read outs, no big new features came about (yes, some features were removed, much to the dismay of several forum members).
- The top icons (nav, music, etc) did not seem to be 'in a tray' as they are now (or so my memory recalls - again, didn't think to pay enough attention)
Indeed the case.
- This individual stated being very bothered when various button presses would take time to activate - so the team spent considerable effort speeding response times up - but are limited by the hardware (I did not ask about model X having a faster processor)
I haven’t noticed much in this regard (for better or worse), but WK057 certainly things it is faster, so perhaps this individuals focus on performance bore fruit.
- This person never uses the web browser (who does LOL), so couldn't comment if it was much faster. When launched, it was set to go to youtube.com - but didn't load in a few seconds and we moved on. Typing this now, youtube is an odd site for it to automatically launch to, I wonder if they added in video playback? but again, the site didn't load, so that is just a guess on my part.
I haven’t thought to check… but I would be shocked if video playback was added.
- Car was running 3G - From what I read here, LTE hasn't really sped things up for owners, but this individual indicated it should, FWIW
- Nothing obvious changed with backup camera.
- Panning in Nav seemed smoother/quicker.
- Did not see Music or Energy windows.
- I did joke about there being a bunch of little features that likely were added, the person indicated indeed there are.
This seems to be the case. Tire pressure read outs, the clock (yippie?), changes to trip metering, shortcut to lock/unlock doors.
- One such little feature, and one this person never even noticed before I pointed to it (in this persons defence, autopilot was their focus, not the V7 overhaul), was a LOCK icon at the very top left of the screen. It appeared to indicate if the doors are locked or not. This individual never actually noticed it there before. Did not test, but I suspect it may be a quick way to lock/unlock the doors - yay.
- The instrument cluster follows the same dark/flat approach.
Indeed.
- The energy graph and nav were on screen. As much as I said 'flat', these two were 'rounded', in the sense of round dials - the energy graph no longer is the rectangular design.
So the energy graph changed substantially from what I saw. The NAV I think is quite close… I like how the new NAV fades into the background.
- v7 UI Overhaul is very close, again except for the rounded energy graph (and I'm pretty sure Nav was rounded as well, but less certain)
- As the car wasn't in motion/on (i didn't step on the brake), nothing of note was displayed in the center area.
Well we all know what is there now!
- It was mentioned that the center area got a large redesign. I honestly couldn't grasp/picture what was being explained to me - it sounded like the round dial interface was gone - which would seem to be represented in the above link/picture.
- The center area is going to show the cars position in relation to the lane markings
- It (or somewhere) will also indicate the position and distance of cars/objects around you - "very dynamic" were the words used.
- It was mentioned that if you got too close to an object beside you, the car would move you away. I interpreted that as a means to prevent/reduce impact of side swiping.
The above 4 points all turned out to be accurate.
All in all, the info I got seemed to be pretty darn accurate. Lesson learned... it is well worth talking to Tesla employees at Superchargers!
