Weird. Do you have a picture of your center screen showing your car hugging the line? Mine shows my car completely centered. And do you have an image from when your wife followed you, showing how close you are to the center line? Basically, how close are you to the center line? A foot? 6"?
What kind of roads are you talking about? Highways have to meet certain standards, ie they follow formulas on how much bend and what speed. I've never seen a bend on a highway that my car could not handle. Now, on surface roads, where I make a sharp right after a rise in the middle, the car can't see over the rise, so it can't see the sharp right, that's not going to work. I know that, so I don't use AP in those situations.
I may or may not have video of both the screen and the road, which may or may not have required me to hold my phone while I was driving, which may or may not be able to be used against me in my province if posted publicly. If I had such videos recently, they would be from my trip to this appointment.
The route I took to the mobile service appointment was this (I have no idea if this link works, sorry):
Google Maps
Turns like this cause my car to not just hug the left of the lane, but actually
cross the line into opposing traffic by a couple inches:
Google Maps (EDIT: I think it was this slightly earlier corner:
Google Maps )
(my dashcam stopped working prior to that wonderful experience, so I have no proof). I know this not only because I know where my tires are, but because the centre line has a rumble strip that I heard and felt.
Note that the above curve has no speed caution signs. It's tighter, yes, but doesn't even have the speed cautions that otherwise get littered around many corners on our highways when there is a legitimised concern about speed through a corner. IIRC the speed limit here is 90 km/h, with folks often going 100 or 110 (I believe AP caps it at 100 through this section, as it does most of the route).
Crossing the line is rare. Hugging it within perhaps 4" from the front bumper corner is common around rightward corners. Leftward corners have me in the middle or still a bit to the left.
The common routes we take are Kelowna BC to Salmon Arm BC. Look it up on maps if you're curious. There are certainly more curves to the roads than, say, an interstate. There's also a fair amount of local elevation change and road banking that might inhibit AP's ability to track lines well, especially when traffic is higher (i.e. on the way to work, when most people drive...). Perhaps it is naive of me, but I do expect Autosteer to work even in the morning rush if it is ever to become non-beta. Note that "morning rush" still has people going at or above the speed limit, there's just more cars.
If I use AP more in-town or on backroads, I drop the max speed and am absolutely locked focus on what the car is doing. Any funny business at those points is currently excusable and I do not expect good performance. It's specifically called out as an unsupported case for AP right now.
More direct answers...
- No video from following the car, good idea. We'll set this up next time we're driving separate vehicles in line (it'll be at least a month before this happens).
- No video or pictures showing the screen yet, but see below. Coming soon.
- On straights, distance from the centre line varies due to variation in road width. 6" is excusable when there is 6" on both sides. I'll express it as a percentage ratio. It's perhaps 30/70 if centred is 50/50. Sometimes though, on straights, it will track in centre. If it doesn't, it's always leftward.
- On rightward corners, it's often 10/90 if not worse. On leftward, again mostly 30/70 to 50/50.
- The in-car screen does show the leftward hugging and even line crossing when it occurs. This aligns with service's statement that the camera calibration is good.
I'm making a long trip soon (next week) to Vancouver Island. This will have me on highways that are generally more friendly to AP, with some travel during dark which also works better. I've just got a tripod and phone mount set up that I plan to have the phone set up in back to record the screen and road as a sort of dashcam, so I will soon have video footage demonstrating these behaviours. All testing will be done at speed limits or with speed reduced when signs dictate so.
That said, I might stop testing if it becomes overly annoying or dangerous. My wife will be a passenger for this trip, and I know AP is not a good experience as a passenger.
