I just finished driving a new (inventory) P100D from Miami to Minneapolis and wanted to post a few notes about the trip while they're fresh in my mind. I spent most of the trip on 17.24.30 and laid down at least 1,600 miles using Autopilot. I'm coming from a Model S 85D and a few of these are probably standard HW1->HW2 known issues.
- For the most part, Autopilot worked great. It stayed fairly well centered with very little ping ponging between the lines. Commonly trucking along at 80mph and it did fine. The only time it consistently struggled was in heavy stop and go traffic, where it would wandering through the lane way too much.
- The displayed speed limits were wrong on many occasions. Most often, I was on a stretch of road with a 70 mph limit and the screen was only displaying 65 mph. I assumed this was due to outdated map data, but even on a highway close to home with a 55mph limit, it displayed 45mph (even though it's been 55mph for at least the past two years). No problem other than the speed chime (I set mine to +10mph), but it was really clear that the cameras weren't reading the speed signs at all.
- The lane changing is super aggressive. Sounds like previous versions were too slow, but man, after changing lanes several hundred times over the past week, you really don't get used to how strongly it yanks you into the next lane. They definitely need to tweak the curve to smooth it out a bit. I had maybe 4 or 5 times where it just got the lane change wrong and it got stuck between lanes.
- I hit a few cases where Autopilot couldn't be engaged for several minutes due to it not fully recognizing lane markers. It almost seemed like some component of Autopilot crashed/errored and took several minutes to reinitialize. It happened maybe 3 times and lasted for about 8-10 minutes, pretty sure it happened after I had manually disengaged Autopilot. The bold white lane lines disappeared and even under super ideal conditions with very clean lane markings, the outer white lines on the display wouldn't appear. The darker lines seemed to match up properly, displaying bends and my lane positioning properly, and other cars showed up on the display. Eventually the white lines would suddenly pop back on and AP was good to go again. Very odd and very much looked like the "lane" component of AP just glitched out for several minutes.
- I hit quite a few cases, at least 30+ where AP hit the brakes a bit when a new car came into view, even if it was much further down the road and traveling at the same relative speed. Usually happened during a lane change. It never slowed the car by more than 4-5mph, but it was very unexpected and unnatural braking and if anyone was riding my bumper then it could've been an issue. I had one case towards the end of the trip where a low overpass caused it to brake.
- The amount of torque required on the steering wheel to keep AP active is much higher than it ever was in my 85d. Sometimes I had to give the wheel a good wiggle in order to let it know that my hands were in fact on the wheel. On my 85d, it seemed like the slightest bit of motion did the trick and even then, the warning message rarely came up. In the Model X P100d, I had to give it a fairly significant input and must have seen the warning message at least 300-400 times over the trip, even though my hands were constantly on the wheel.
- One of my top requests for HW1 which still stands for HW2 and became very apparent with all of the driving, I wish AP had an option to avoid riding in another car's blind spot. HW2 should definitely be capable of this so hopefully it shows up at some point. I know a lot of people have asked for better decision-making around lane positioning when passing vehicles, in general it seems like there is a lot of room to improve the "defensive driving" capabilities. In Miami in particular, no joking that well over half of the other drivers we passed on the freeway were texting or just distracted by their phones and literally not looking at the road...it was surprising at first but really disgusting after about 30 minutes seeing the vast majority of drivers weaving and drifting out of their lanes with a phone up to their face. Total epidemic, and it reminded me why I bought the safest vehicle possible.
I'm sure I'll think of a few more things, but this covers the main things I noticed. Overall, it was pretty smooth and a really enjoyable ride. Even with the issues mentioned, I feel like AP was really indispensable and for the few times that I disabled it due to poor roads or poor conditions, I was always quick to re-engage it on the asap.
- For the most part, Autopilot worked great. It stayed fairly well centered with very little ping ponging between the lines. Commonly trucking along at 80mph and it did fine. The only time it consistently struggled was in heavy stop and go traffic, where it would wandering through the lane way too much.
- The displayed speed limits were wrong on many occasions. Most often, I was on a stretch of road with a 70 mph limit and the screen was only displaying 65 mph. I assumed this was due to outdated map data, but even on a highway close to home with a 55mph limit, it displayed 45mph (even though it's been 55mph for at least the past two years). No problem other than the speed chime (I set mine to +10mph), but it was really clear that the cameras weren't reading the speed signs at all.
- The lane changing is super aggressive. Sounds like previous versions were too slow, but man, after changing lanes several hundred times over the past week, you really don't get used to how strongly it yanks you into the next lane. They definitely need to tweak the curve to smooth it out a bit. I had maybe 4 or 5 times where it just got the lane change wrong and it got stuck between lanes.
- I hit a few cases where Autopilot couldn't be engaged for several minutes due to it not fully recognizing lane markers. It almost seemed like some component of Autopilot crashed/errored and took several minutes to reinitialize. It happened maybe 3 times and lasted for about 8-10 minutes, pretty sure it happened after I had manually disengaged Autopilot. The bold white lane lines disappeared and even under super ideal conditions with very clean lane markings, the outer white lines on the display wouldn't appear. The darker lines seemed to match up properly, displaying bends and my lane positioning properly, and other cars showed up on the display. Eventually the white lines would suddenly pop back on and AP was good to go again. Very odd and very much looked like the "lane" component of AP just glitched out for several minutes.
- I hit quite a few cases, at least 30+ where AP hit the brakes a bit when a new car came into view, even if it was much further down the road and traveling at the same relative speed. Usually happened during a lane change. It never slowed the car by more than 4-5mph, but it was very unexpected and unnatural braking and if anyone was riding my bumper then it could've been an issue. I had one case towards the end of the trip where a low overpass caused it to brake.
- The amount of torque required on the steering wheel to keep AP active is much higher than it ever was in my 85d. Sometimes I had to give the wheel a good wiggle in order to let it know that my hands were in fact on the wheel. On my 85d, it seemed like the slightest bit of motion did the trick and even then, the warning message rarely came up. In the Model X P100d, I had to give it a fairly significant input and must have seen the warning message at least 300-400 times over the trip, even though my hands were constantly on the wheel.
- One of my top requests for HW1 which still stands for HW2 and became very apparent with all of the driving, I wish AP had an option to avoid riding in another car's blind spot. HW2 should definitely be capable of this so hopefully it shows up at some point. I know a lot of people have asked for better decision-making around lane positioning when passing vehicles, in general it seems like there is a lot of room to improve the "defensive driving" capabilities. In Miami in particular, no joking that well over half of the other drivers we passed on the freeway were texting or just distracted by their phones and literally not looking at the road...it was surprising at first but really disgusting after about 30 minutes seeing the vast majority of drivers weaving and drifting out of their lanes with a phone up to their face. Total epidemic, and it reminded me why I bought the safest vehicle possible.
I'm sure I'll think of a few more things, but this covers the main things I noticed. Overall, it was pretty smooth and a really enjoyable ride. Even with the issues mentioned, I feel like AP was really indispensable and for the few times that I disabled it due to poor roads or poor conditions, I was always quick to re-engage it on the asap.
