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My Model 3 Punished Me Yesterday

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So, we had the Enhanced Auto Pilot installed yesterday on our M3 at the Costa Mesa SC. It's about a 1 1/2 hour drive for us back home so after about 1 hour of driving we stopped setup the auto pilot and wanted to test it out the rest of the way home. It went well for a few miles then it kept prompting me to put pressure on the steering wheel, so I did. It kept prompting me more and more then eventually it shut off the auto steer and said "Auto Steer will not be available for the rest of this trip". I guess I wasn't putting the proper type of pressure on the steering wheel, I was worried I would accidentally disengage the auto steer with too much pressure. I just thought that was funny, I felt like a little kid, my M3 was scolding me saying "If you can't use auto steer correctly, then you're not going to use it at all". Tried again after making a stop and it worked well, it will take a bit to get used to holding the wheel just right.
 
You can pull pretty hard on the wheel without disengaging autosteer.
Its probably a good idea to intentionally pull hard enough to make it disengage a few times so you know what it feels like in case you need to do it in an emergency. I was a little surprised how much resistance the car gives. Its hard to disengage autosteer smoothly by grabbing the wheel. Your passengers will definitely notice.
 
Ya, after googling it I found out it needed to be turning pressure. I thought maybe it had sensors on the wheel to know you had your hands on it. All the videos show people with their hands down lightly grasping the lower part of the wheel so that’s what I tried at first.

I was kind of disappointed that we didn’t get more training from the tec. He basically took us around the block, showed us how to engage it and that was about it.
 
You can pull pretty hard on the wheel without disengaging autosteer.
Its probably a good idea to intentionally pull hard enough to make it disengage a few times so you know what it feels like in case you need to do it in an emergency. I was a little surprised how much resistance the car gives. Its hard to disengage autosteer smoothly by grabbing the wheel. Your passengers will definitely notice.

I second this. Practice and get used to the sharp swerve you'll get when disengaging EAP, otherwise you may startle yourself when you don't need any additional stress, such as in a sudden avoidance maneuver.
 
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I think if you get the warnings 2 or 3 times, the next one will disable you for the trip. So now once I get the 2nd one, I disable AP and start it over again. I not sure if it really reset the counts, but it seems to work better, at least I don't have any disabling for a while. The only way I could drive to NOT get any warning at all is to drive one handed (8to10 or 2to4 position). Having both hands on the wheel just made the wheel too balance (when you are on a freeway with so little turns) and it would for sure trip the warnings.
 
This is exactly why I did not order EAP. Why i have to exchange whole pleasure of driving this car to all these nuances. I understand that in some cases like heavy traffic EAP is helpful, but if I can not have my hands on a wheel the same way as always and have to constantly make some turning pressure, why I need that torture? Anyway I always prefer to drive than to be a passenger. If I wanted to be a passenger I would keep my current car.
 
This is exactly why I did not order EAP. Why i have to exchange whole pleasure of driving this car to all these nuances. I understand that in some cases like heavy traffic EAP is helpful, but if I can not have my hands on a wheel the same way as always and have to constantly make some turning pressure, why I need that torture? Anyway I always prefer to drive than to be a passenger. If I wanted to be a passenger I would keep my current car.
It ain't for everyone, but it's incredibly useful on long highway trips. I don't really use it in commute traffic. Too many variables in heavy traffic to trust it yet, I think.
 
Thanks, I appreciate all the feedback, it will take a bit to get used to but for the little time I got to use it it was great. I really loved it when traffic was stop and go. It took a while for me to wrap my brain around trusting that the car will stop before it hits that car in front.
 
This is exactly why I did not order EAP. Why i have to exchange whole pleasure of driving this car to all these nuances. I understand that in some cases like heavy traffic EAP is helpful, but if I can not have my hands on a wheel the same way as always and have to constantly make some turning pressure, why I need that torture? Anyway I always prefer to drive than to be a passenger. If I wanted to be a passenger I would keep my current car.

You absolutely can keep your hands in the same position, just need a little torque periodically. The adaptive cruise control is the really useful feature.

And remember that the frequent nag is there because of idiots that wanted to totally ignore the road.
 
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You absolutely can keep your hands in the same position, just need a little torque periodically. The adaptive cruise control is the really useful feature.

And remember that the frequent nag is there because of idiots that wanted to totally ignore the road.
It is not about position. With EAP I should constantly (or from time to time at least) make some torque and it is annoying already. EAP can be helpful in a routine traffic where situation is not very complex, but I am not sure if I would completely relaxed for once and second how you are relaxed creating resistance torque anyway? Third, as I said, I do like to drive (especially Tesla).
 
I use Autosteer with my hands at 7 & 5 which means they are basically resting in my lap. Just very lightly tugging on the wheel allows me to almost never see the nags. I'm really, really surprised that this seems difficult to many M3 owners. It's a non issue for me and it is definitely NOT the same as driving without it. Its a God send in bumper to bumper traffic
 
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I think if you get the warnings 2 or 3 times, the next one will disable you for the trip. So now once I get the 2nd one, I disable AP and start it over again. I not sure if it really reset the counts, but it seems to work better, at least I don't have any disabling for a while. The only way I could drive to NOT get any warning at all is to drive one handed (8to10 or 2to4 position). Having both hands on the wheel just made the wheel too balance (when you are on a freeway with so little turns) and it would for sure trip the warnings.

It is supposed to be three prompts that go to audible within one hour to disable - and you can hear which of the prompts or thinks you're on by the pattern of tones.

Turning off Autopilot should not matter to this counter. Going in to Park and back out resets the counter - that's the end of "this drive" per the car.
 
You can pull pretty hard on the wheel without disengaging autosteer.
Its probably a good idea to intentionally pull hard enough to make it disengage a few times so you know what it feels like in case you need to do it in an emergency. I was a little surprised how much resistance the car gives. Its hard to disengage autosteer smoothly by grabbing the wheel. Your passengers will definitely notice.

One of the interesting things about AP is that this is variable, at least on AP1 (I assume the others are the same.)

When the car is very confident it is in the right place, you're right, it takes quite a lot of force.

As the conditions get worse, it takes less force for the computer to surrender control; in really bad conditions where it won't allow you to enter Autopilot but it's still running, the lightest possible touch will cause it to disable in my experience.
 
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You can pull pretty hard on the wheel without disengaging autosteer.
Its probably a good idea to intentionally pull hard enough to make it disengage a few times so you know what it feels like in case you need to do it in an emergency. I was a little surprised how much resistance the car gives. Its hard to disengage autosteer smoothly by grabbing the wheel. Your passengers will definitely notice.
Yeah I tried that once didn't like the required amount of force, from then on I push the stalk up to disengage it. I found holding the bottom of the steering wheel and pushing to either side a little to work pretty well. Tomorrow I am going back to Richmond and will get to try it out on a longer stretch.