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Newbie autopilot question
- Thread starter Comanche
- Start date
No, you need FSD (or EAP?) for red lights.
I always turn AP (or TACC) off when approaching roundabouts, otherwise there is too little control on your speed.
But then (IMHO) you shouldn't really be using AP in relatively complicated traffic situations like intersections anyway.
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It works fine on motorway-style roads (multilane separated carriageways), which is where it says you're supposed to use it.
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You will receive a range of opinions on this. My experience with Autopilot on our '22 model 3 is that it works extremely well on divided highways, which is its intended use. On rural two lane roads, it is somewhat useful but hugs the centreline too closely and sometimes brakes hard because it "sees" things that are not there. My grade is A+ for divided highways and D for two lane roads.
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BitJam
Active Member
I use it for 80% of my driving here in rural New Mexico which is mostly on two lane roads. It makes my life much easier. There are a couple of places where the lanes are weird and it will try to go into the wrong lane out of an intersection. This surprised me at first but now that I know about it, it's no big deal. Once it tried to veer into a car that was waiting for a light which was scary. OTOH it saved the life of a young deer that ran in front of my car. The car saw the deer and started hard braking before I even saw it.
It's really great for stop and go traffic in the "downtown" area (a few blocks). As others have said, I have to take over when I come to a stop sign or if I'm the first person at a red stop light.
One trick that helped me a lot is a slight upward motion on the gear stalk disengages autopilot. If you push it up too forcefully then it might think you are trying to go into reverse so you need to learn the slight upward motion. If you hold the gear stalk down all the way then it will set the max speed to the current speed limit. If you touch the current speed on the screen then it will set the max speed to that speed.
I have little interest in owning or even driving a car that doesn't have autopilot or better.
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Maximillan
Member
Even on a motorway, I won't use it if there is a bit of traffic around. It's too cautious and the phantom braking can catch out a car that's following you.
You should also consider the quality of the road as well, you'll find that the line that autopilot follows will hit the majority of potholes in that lane.
You should also consider the quality of the road as well, you'll find that the line that autopilot follows will hit the majority of potholes in that lane.
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If you get one like mine, it will slam the brakes on at any opportunity for no reason with nothing around or sometimes with someone behind you. Amazing car, terrible cruise control. If you use autopilot, use it with caution and stay very alert until you fully understand its shortfalls.
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If you drive on narrow potholed roads like me, forget autosteer. It's much worse since we had radar turned off by Elon and rely on vision. I've had cars with much better autopilot than Tesla, it's the worse part of the car.
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Isnt the software stack used in the US for Auto Pilot a different version than in Australia? I heard we have an outdated one here.
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BitJam
Active Member
My understanding is there are two stacks. One for FSD Beta and another older one for everything else. AFAIK, Autopilot and non-Beta FSD everywhere use the older stack. The older stack is even used for highway driving with FSD Beta. But this may change with the next FSD Beta release where one stack (the newer one) will rule them all.
But I understand Teslas have only recently been introduced to Australia and New Zealand and IIUC FSD is much cheaper there compared to the price in the US. My guess is the reason for this is the roads and rules are different enough there that Tesla wants to get more data to train their neural network for driving on those roads.
So my best understanding is it's the same older software stack but it lacks training for that area which would explain why it's not nearly as good. A similar thing happened in the US where the cars were better behaved around the San Francisco Bay Area because there had been a lot more training done there.
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We've had Tesla 3s for over 3yrs. And Ss for longer.
When FSD Beta was introduced in the US the price went up substantially. That hasn't happened yet in other markets as no Beta. Also no FSD subscription options.
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BitJam
Active Member
Thanks for the correction!
The price for FSD in the US before beta was $10K US. If I did the conversions correctly, it is only $7K US in New Zealand and $7.7K US in Australia. IIRC Teslas were recently introduced to New Zealand and some of us were wondering about the low FSD price. My best guess was that Tesla wanted to get more people into the FSD program so they could get more training in that part of the world.
The need for more training would explain why the same non-Beta stack does not perform as well in Australia and New Zealand and would also explain the much lower price. Maybe you have other ideas of how to explain this. If so, I'd like to hear them. I have no monopoly on the truth.
Andrej Karpathy gave an overview of the training process in a recent interview with Lex Fridman:
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I have a M3 and absolutely love Basic Autopilot. I don’t use it in wet or snow conditions, but it’s great in traffic and major roads over 35mph. I supervise (as required). There are some issues that you will learn to take over control. It sometimes annoying habits and occasional phantom braking.
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ZenRockGarden
Active Member
Autopilot works fine, as long as you understand what it actually is.
We're talking basic AP here - NOT the $15k Full Self Driving.
AP is a good traffic-aware cruise control which can maintain you in your lane and follow the pace of any car in front of you as well as dealing with a modest amount of merging traffic. It is a nice cognitive load reducer on long highway trips and can also handle stop and go traffic duty.
It is NOT well named, it does not drive the car in city streets, it does not obey traffic lights nor stop signs or handle cross-traffic, lane changes, etc, It is a fancy cruise control - you would not expect a cruise control to handle traffic lights - AP doesn't do so either.
We're talking basic AP here - NOT the $15k Full Self Driving.
AP is a good traffic-aware cruise control which can maintain you in your lane and follow the pace of any car in front of you as well as dealing with a modest amount of merging traffic. It is a nice cognitive load reducer on long highway trips and can also handle stop and go traffic duty.
It is NOT well named, it does not drive the car in city streets, it does not obey traffic lights nor stop signs or handle cross-traffic, lane changes, etc, It is a fancy cruise control - you would not expect a cruise control to handle traffic lights - AP doesn't do so either.
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