Is the current NoA helpful or harmful?

[sperkin]

NoA is worst than EAP. EAP can handle a lane splitting into two but NoA will swerve as it's confused by it. 100% reproducible. When I use EAP it stays to the right and take the right lane but on NoA it goes left and right, slams on the brakes before it lands on the right lane.

 

[OCR1]

Not really sure where CR gets off on saying that this is way worse than normal driving? It easily takes the stress off normal highway driving, especially for longer drives with less traffic. The way I see it, it seems to work great with the following exceptions:

• If a car is in the 'danger zone' when it initiates a lane change, it tends to brake aggressively.
• Super heavy traffic, it tends to have trouble if people are too aggressive
• It likes to pass on the right, which isn't illegal in my state... but can sometimes be dumb
• Speed-based lane changes (I have mine set on 'Medium', not 'Mad Max') seems somewhat unpredictable? It's unclear what conditions it looks for to make a lane change

If you just let NoA do it's thing, and understand the limitations, it's way easier IMO than driving yourself.

This is the problem I have with NoA. People like to say how amazing it is, except for...all of the above issues...

So if you were a teacher offering driving lessons to new students and they exhibited all of the above behavior, would you let them go drive a car on their own?

And yes, it’s not full self driving yet, blah blah blah. But if it’s this retarded why do I need to supervise such bad driving skills instead of just driving the car myself? If I wanted to teach someone how to drive I would set up a driving school and charge money for my lessons. But Elon has me paying him for the privilege of teaching my car how to drive. And now he wants to raise the prices. Just ridiculous!

 

[JustinCalif]

Personally, I find that NoA is extremely useful in specific situations right now... I have to drive the heavy bumper to bumper gridlock grind of Los Angeles freeways. To me it is especially useful in these situations... when the freeways speeds rarely exceed 25 mph. However, I have found it necessary to turn off (by default) the Automatic Lane Change capability... right now it is too slow, overly cautious and may actually create a situation that doesn't exist. I require my confirmation by using the turn signal stalk (the old previous way) to be much more effective... it still suggests the lane changes but allows me to make the final determination of when... this has been very effective for me personally.

 

[JustinCalif]

I do however, completely disagree with CR character assassinations of the entire system with their editorial statements. I think it smells of Tesla bashing... personally, I do not hold CR Magazine in high regard either for its editorial objectivity... I think they set out to sell magazines and create articles that generate a level sensationalism that meets that goal... they do NOT do exhaustive testing and present counter opinions and data... they simply state their opinions and run with it... It is editorial opinion... not objective evaluation.

 

[Thunder7ga]

I wrote something a few weeks ago on my feelings of NoA.

Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot on Busy City Highways – Electric-Solar Forum Blog

 

[mswlogo]

It’s always been interesting to see what NoA can do with each update. It has come a long ways. But as of right now it’s generally dangerous to turn NoA with no confirm than to just leave NoA off. I have shut off NoA Start automatically, I typically won’t push the button to Enable NoA in the Nav, And I turned Confirm Lane Change back on, in case I do want NoA.

Plane old AutoSteer is much safer and requires way less stress. It changes lanes when I tell it. It does not cut people off. It does not change lanes when it shouldn’t. It does not pass when it shouldn’t. It does not put you in a bad or inappropriate lane when it shouldn’t. It does not poorly merge when it shouldn’t. It does not abort lane change because you don’t have the perfect weight on the wheel through the lane change.

It’s not that I’m bashing Tesla. It’s just they still have lot of work to do and I expected it. I never use Summon for the same reason.

It also seems to phantom brake a lot less in plain Jane Auto Steer. But it has done one mild phantom brake. Where with NoA and no confirm it seemed to phantom brake a lot. But I would go through long periods with no phantom brake on NoA.

It’s cool tech, and I expect it to get better, but don’t fool yourself in thinking it’s better than it really is.

 

[JPP]

It works so much better than great-grandma who can barely see over the wheel and stays in the left lane, doing 45 on a 70 mph Interstate!

You need to go to south Floria and see all of the 'Q-tips' with the white tuft of hair barely visible above the sill....scary driving there.

 

[juanmedina]

 

[OCR1]

I do however, completely disagree with CR character assassinations of the entire system with their editorial statements. I think it smells of Tesla bashing... personally, I do not hold CR Magazine in high regard either for its editorial objectivity... I think they set out to sell magazines and create articles that generate a level sensationalism that meets that goal... they do NOT do exhaustive testing and present counter opinions and data... they simply state their opinions and run with it... It is editorial opinion... not objective evaluation.

I have been reading Consumer Reports for over 40 years. I have never found them to be anything but an organization of high integrity. They are a non profit organization dedicated to providing quality information for consumers. At times I don’t agree with their recommendations because they may be biasing them toward the “average” consumer rather than an enthusiast of the product. But I don’t believe they engage in editorial sensationalism by any means.

I happen to generally agree with their findings in the article. And while I know a lot of forum members here are willing to work with the limitations of FSD, I don’t think it’s ready for the “average” consumer yet. I consider myself quite tech savvy. I clearly understand the need to keep my hands on the wheel and continually monitor the car while it’s driving. And yet I still find myself drifting off to thinking about other things after the car has been driving around for a while, giving me an overall sense of confidence that it’s got things covered.

And then it does something really awful, like just forgetting to come to a stop when the car in front of me stops...which it just did to me less than an hour ago. And I realize that the average consumer is not ready to handle a car that generally drives by itself just fine but occasionally does some really scary things that need immediate attention. So I’m glad that CR is educating people on whether a Tesla with self driving is the right solution for them, even if it may give Tesla a negative slant for the time being.

 

[Kant.Ing]

Thanks, but I stopped watching it at 1:20.

 

[WattsUpDoc?]

I'm a fan of the recent update. Is it perfect? No! Nothing that "man" is involved in will ever be perfect. However, it is quite good and only needs assistance from me when there's heavy traffic (i.e. rush hour) and I need to be a little more aggressive than the NoA is. Perhaps I just get too impatient.

 

[argon2018]

Not really sure where CR gets off on saying that this is way worse than normal driving? It easily takes the stress off normal highway driving, especially for longer drives with less traffic. The way I see it, it seems to work great with the following exceptions:

• If a car is in the 'danger zone' when it initiates a lane change, it tends to brake aggressively.
• Super heavy traffic, it tends to have trouble if people are too aggressive
• It likes to pass on the right, which isn't illegal in my state... but can sometimes be dumb
• Speed-based lane changes (I have mine set on 'Medium', not 'Mad Max') seems somewhat unpredictable? It's unclear what conditions it looks for to make a lane change

If you just let NoA do it's thing, and understand the limitations, it's way easier IMO than driving yourself.

Couldn’t agree more. After 6000 miles driving with AP it’s absolutely priceless in highway. It makes driving much safer.

Whoever wrote and published this article is either retarded or intentionally wrote this especially given the timing, it’s prob the latter. Comparing driver assist to a human WTF

 

[CCIE]

CR is the closest you’ll get to a neutral product review. They’re not perfect, but they don’t have an anti-Tesla or anti-EV agenda. They also don’t hold back any punches when they find issues with their Teslas.

NoA is definitely not ready for prime time. And, without the AP computer having better rear-facing cameras, I’m not sure how it’ll ever get better at lane changes. Without them it will always have issues with fast moving cars in an adjacent lane while it’s trying to change lanes.

 

[jrh007]

Come on CR, no human driver ever has done this?.

I’m guessing the author has never driven I95 in Miami. Lol

 

[ucmndd]

Couldn’t agree more. After 6000 miles driving with AP it’s absolutely priceless in highway. It makes driving much safer.

Autopilot != Navigate on Autopilot

 

[s1rk]

I echo much of the statements on this thread. I use normal AP on a regular basis and love it. I don't usually have NoA because it makes my driving more stressful with the random braking and incompetent lane changing.

 

[chronopc]

I’m guessing the author has never driven I95 in Miami. Lol

Or anywhere in CA.

 

[Kirby64]

This is the problem I have with NoA. People like to say how amazing it is, except for...all of the above issues...

So if you were a teacher offering driving lessons to new students and they exhibited all of the above behavior, would you let them go drive a car on their own?

And yes, it’s not full self driving yet, blah blah blah. But if it’s this retarded why do I need to supervise such bad driving skills instead of just driving the car myself? If I wanted to teach someone how to drive I would set up a driving school and charge money for my lessons. But Elon has me paying him for the privilege of teaching my car how to drive. And now he wants to raise the prices. Just ridiculous!

You're free to drive the car yourself and not use NoA or even autopilot... here's the thing: I know what weird stuff NoA does and I know to be aware of them. I generally don't have to worry about what lane to be in or maintaining my lane, and overtaking is often done correctly. I've mentioned it occasionally does weird stuff, not all the time. In general, I just find it more relaxing.

 

[t-rizzle]

I have HW3 in my car so I don't have the option to disable lane change confirmation. I probably would not disable that though at this time and continue to confirm the lane change suggestion. I have found, like others have noted, that it tries to switch lanes at odd times. I have had the car set to 'Mad Max' after using the default setting, either Mild or Average, the first time testing it on the highway as I find that Mad Max mode changes lanes best (IMO).

I constantly press the cancel lane change hoping that this is in some way providing feedback that in that situation there is no need to change lanes at that time (plenty of distance between the car ahead, still over two miles away from the exit, or the lane it wants to move into has more traffic and no real room to move into it anyway). I also have less then 900 miles on the car / cpu so I still don't know if there is an adjustment period for all the hardware and possibly 'getting to know me'. I like to think it is and use AP every opportunity I can and correct it as often as I feel that it should drive the way I want it to.

 

[Yangy]

I think it's the way we use NOA wrong. I found it's way too aggressive on higher settings and need a lot of extra attention because of constant lane changing.
However, now I set
- the NOA setting to mild,
- following distance to 6 cars,
- and set speed to be just at the speed limit or slightly slower than the car in front of me.

Then it works really well, only suggesting changing lanes when there's a slow truck in the front, then it will change lane back after passing. I just drove 300 miles yesterday and feels it helps quite a bit.