My Experience with Model 3 on NoA - What's Your's?

[ranss12]

I have about 39,000 miles on my Model 3, of which I took delivery in June of 2018. My VIN is 229xx and I don't know whether I have HW2.0 or 2.5 I Have made 3 cross-country trips (western NY to San Diego) as well as trips to North Carolina, Connecticutt, and Toronto. In general, I love my car and can't see owning anything else except maybe a Model Y. One area that I'm having difficulty with is NoA.
Having put endless interstate miles on my car, often with few other vehicles around, these are my issues with NoA.
I know, by the way, that NoA is beta software, so I am not expecting perfection.

1: It's erratic on lane changes. It often wants to change from the right lane to the left lane for no obvious reason. This often occurs near interstate interchanges, as if it thinks the car should move to the fast lane in anticipation that there might be a car entering the interstate in the upcoming on-ramp. However, it is not consistent with even doing this. Sometimes it does it and sometimes it doesn't, again with no other vehicles around.
2: It's unpredictable when coming up to another, slower vehicle. When coming up to a semi, it often wants to change to the passing lane 150 yards prior to overtaking, even if our closure speed is only about 2 mph. Sometimes it just comes up behind the truck, slows and sets there, even when no other vehicles are within 1/4 mile.
3: It never wants to move into the passing lane when coming up behind a car, again with no other traffic around.
4: When it does move to pass a truck, it never wants to go back into the right lane, even when the passed vehicle is 1/4 mile behind me and there is no other traffic around.
5: As a result of this, I've had to disable the auto-lane change without acknowledgment.
6: With regards to item 2 above, there are times when I manually initiate a lane change (letting autopilot do the work) and the car just stays in the right lane, behind the car I want to pass, indefinitely, with the turn signal blinking. again with no other vehicle around. I have to disengage autopilot to manually pass the car.

With all this being said, I still greatly prefer interstate driving with NoA with auto-lane-change turned off to interstate driving without NoA. What I don't know is if the problems above are common problems or if it's just my car. With every OTA update I hope that the situation gets better, but it doesn't. My software version is: 2019.40.50.7

I wish Tesla would describe exactly how NoA decides to make a lane change.

 

[DopeGhoti]

I wish Tesla would describe exactly how NoA decides to make a lane change.

The thing is, it's quite likely that Tesla doesn't even know how NoA decides to initiate a lane change. All it knows is that the neural network will, according to its criteria, most likely request one when it should based on the test data. The best Tesla could do is give us the input data for the network with weighting and bias information, and it's unlikely they'll release that as it's quite likely very proprietary.

That said, it was a short while before I started messing about with NoA. I wanted to get used to driving the car first, and then get used to TACC and Autosteer's idiosyncrasies. When I finally did turn NoA on, I opted to require lane change confirmation, and I left my aggressiveness setting at Standard. As of the .40 update series, I've been confident enough in NoA's decision-making that I have turned on autonomous lane changes; only rarely has it made decisions I'd not have, but I can understand why it wanted to do what it suggested. My thoughts and experiences vis-a-vis your list above (and this not meant to refute, but rather to share my experience), on Hardware 3:

1. I've not had anything I'd characterize as 'erratic' lane change decisions. Usually it will say why it's changing lanes (e. g. 'moving to faster lane'; 'changing lanes to follow route'; 'moving away from cones), and that will mesh well with the context at the time. I have had a fair number of aborted lane changes, where the car will get a third of the way over, and then quickly nope back into the original lane. This has gotten markedly less frequent with each release, and I don't thing I've ever seen it happen since the .50 series.
2. I have seen both of these behaviors as well. The trigger seems to be the differential between your speed and your set speed; if the vehicle ahead of you is going slower enough, NoA will try to pass if able. But if you're on Standard, set to (say) +5 MPH, and the vehicle ahead is going only 3 over, your car will happily nestle in behind its forerunner.
3. I've experienced the contrary- my car's happy to enter the passing lane but I don't think I've ever seen it move out of the passing lane notwithstanding routing or overtaking on the right.
4. See above. My car loves to sit in the leftmost lane, left to its own devices. I just look for a spot and signal right to get out of the passing lane as is appropriate.
5. I've left it on; I think I've cancelled only a handful of lane changes before they started, and "manual" auto-lane-changes still work for me.
6. I've only had this happen when the car seems to get confused about the lane situation (e. g. the lane lines are obscured due to wear); the car will err on the side of "there's no lane there" if it's not relatively sure there's a safe lane to move into.

 

[tvad]

@ranss12, our experience is similar to yours.

 

[drtimhill]

I’m uncertain if Tesla use an NN to make high-level decisions like lane changes. These kids of decisions are best handled by traditional logic coupled with input from the NN about road status etc. If they ARE using an NN for this, it might be an explanation for the rather unpredictable behavior of the car on NoA.

 

[DirtyT3sla]

You have HW2.5. No Model 3 has HW2.0

 

[diplomat33]

I wish Tesla would describe exactly how NoA decides to make a lane change.

The logic right now for auto lane changes is pretty basic as far as I can tell:
1) if the car in front is moving slower than you by X mph (X is determined by your auto lane change setting. Average will have a higher X, Mad Max will have the lowest X), then it will initiate the auto lane change process and check to see if the passing lane is clear.
2) Based on navigation, if you need to be in a different lane (to take an exit or to take a highway transition) then when you are a certain distance from the change, it will initiate the auto lane change process and check if the lane is clear.

 

[TheParad1se]

I've experienced the contrary- my car's happy to enter the passing lane but I don't think I've ever seen it move out of the passing lane notwithstanding routing or overtaking on the right.

I've noticed the same behavior after latest few updates. My Model 3 used to move out of passing lane all the time and it was very convenient. Did someone else notice this and could guess an explanation of why they have changed this ?

 

[drtimhill]

I've noticed the same behavior after latest few updates. My Model 3 used to move out of passing lane all the time and it was very convenient. Did someone else notice this and could guess an explanation of why they have changed this ?

This is a known issues with the latest software, and seems to mostly affect HW2.5 but not HW3 (though some HW3 owners have also reported it).