NoA is worthless, Autopilot is essentially unimproved from 2016-2017, and everybody has caught up.

[alstoralset]

Tesla's stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition into sustainable energy, and their primary focus has been with vehicle electrification.

It may well be that Musk, in furtherance of this mission, saw autonomy as a key aspect of EV adoption, and that's why he made such a big fuss about it.

Tesla electric cars now dominate, and Tesla has certainly accelerated transition into EV. And they met their goal without much more than phoned-in autonomy.

Musk may consider this 'mission accomplished' and focus his efforts elsewhere going forward, but who knows. I'd for one buy another Tesla whether or not it tried to drive itself.

 

[boonedocks]

Agree almost 100% with the OP. My daily commute is greater than 90 miles and have tried NOA after each update and only once every time. At this point it is entirely useless for my full commute.

Just give me hands free nag free car pool lane capability and I’ll be a very happy camper.

 

[NHK X]

I use mine for around 50 miles total daily, or more when called in multiple times for trauma call.

While I can’t compare to AP1, from my time with the car I’ve noticed AP and NOA make steady improvements. Sure, I’ve seen updates with regressions, had the wobbly issues a lot of others have (now stone cold solid with 2020.8.1), used to get phantom braking more frequently but no very seldom. Overall I’ve seen steady improvement to the point where I feel very comfortable and relaxed using it. I understand the way it works, when it wants to merge or start to change exits to exit the freeway.

It is no perfect system, and I do expect a lot more in the future. I still don’t have any doubts that greater change will come in the near future. Just a data point for my own experience.

 

[EinSV]

Thanks.

Weird how people have such different experiences.

Have you never had NOA abort a lane change in the middle, or give you the red hand on wheel alert, or phantom brake, or oversteer into an exit or miss lane exit entirely?

Don't get me wrong. I've had good experiences with NOA too. But I have experienced some issues too.

I don't remember NOA ever missing an exit but I have taken over occasionally when I wasn't sure it would take an exit. Have you ever been driving and missed an exit, or been a passenger when the driver misses an exit? I have -- it happens all the time. People get distracted, start talking, daydreaming, get confused on where to turn and miss exits. And it happens even more frequently when driving to new or unfamiliar places.

The red hand on steering wheel alert on freeways is very rare for me. I did have it happen today when some idiot human driver dangerously cut in front of me from a dead stop on the interstate (another example of people being less safe than NOA). After (appropriately) hard braking to avoid the guy who cut me off, it "yelled" at me to take over. Overall, it handled the situation very well. Phantom brakes are also fairly rare for me -- it happens occasionally but compared to the benefits of AP/NOA it's a minor nuisance.

On the other hand, last night we had dinner at friends and I had to drive home 30 minutes at about 10 pm. What a treat to get whisked home by NOA -- supervising is so much more pleasant (and I believe, safe) than driving at night at the end of a long day.

Incidentally, since some comparisons were made with other companies, let's be clear that none of them have NOA. None. To my knowledge, none of them even have user-activated automatic lane change yet -- a feature available on Model Ss with AP1, built in October 2014 and first activated in October 2015. I understand GM plans to finally add that feature to Supercruise offered on 2021 models -- 6 years after the cars with this feature and 5 years after Tesla first activated it. No idea when they'll have anything that resembles NOA in its current form.

 

[diplomat33]

I don't remember NOA ever missing an exit but I have taken over occasionally when I wasn't sure it would take an exit. Have you ever been driving and missed an exit, or been a passenger when the driver misses an exit? I have -- it happens all the time. People get distracted, start talking, daydreaming, get confused on where to turn and miss exits. And it happens even more frequently when driving to new or unfamiliar places.

The red hand on steering wheel alert on freeways is very rare for me. I did have it happen today when some idiot human driver dangerously cut in front of me from a dead stop on the interstate (another example of people being less safe than NOA). After (appropriately) hard braking to avoid the guy who cut me off, it "yelled" at me to take over. Overall, it handled the situation very well. Phantom brakes are also fairly rare for me -- it happens occasionally but compared to the benefits of AP/NOA it's a minor nuisance.

On the other hand, last night we had dinner at friends and I had to drive home 30 minutes at about 10 pm. What a treat to get whisked home by NOA -- supervising is so much more pleasant (and I believe, safe) than driving at night at the end of a long day.

Yes, phantom braking is very rare for me now. And I've had some good experiences on previous updates where I enjoyed NOA helping me get home. But the fact is that I've had a few scares with NOA too, especially on the latest update.

Recently, NOA oversteered pretty strongly into an exit lane and then tried to auto correct but it looked like it was going to steer me back into the highway lane. Of couse, I held the wheel tightly to correct, but enough to kick me out of AP. It all happened within a few seconds but considering that AP did not slow down and was taking the exit at 70 mph, it's pretty scary.

It was a simple short exit that NOA used to be able to do before. It's not hard, just do like an auto lane change to the right and slow down and then resume lane keeping in the exit lane. It should be a simple maneuver.

So I get that NOA won't be perfect but when it messes up like that, it's hard not to lose trust in the system.

 

[Enginerd]

I'll say that the 2020 Tesla Autopilot does a heck of a lot more on the highway than my 2010 Prius.
Baby steps.

 

[_jmk]

Summary: at this rate of progress the FSD is reality earliest 2035. But, the lack of visible progress does not necessarily mean there isn’t any. Time will tell.

 

[MIT_S60]

The last time I tried turning on NOA, it immediately tried to change lanes, nearly taking out a motorcycle splitting lanes in the process. I had to forcibly cancel with the steering wheel, and got a middle finger in return...

 

[rklip]

OP is right. Shelled out for enhanced autopilot here almost a year ago. What a joke.

This whole feature suite as Tesla falsely pushes it out is the Dippin' Dots (hooray, the future will come at some point!) of high margin automotive add-ons. I guess in that way it replaces the sort of paint sealants guys in plaid suits were selling in the 90's.

 

[stevewoz]

We went through all of that and more in our 2016 and 2019 Model S's. We have resorted to rarely even using AP, even on urban highways, and it makes us much happier. I'm happy with my Tesla with AP off. Every car I've had since 2004 had working adaptive cruise control, until the Tesla's.

 

[Kenyakid]

Agree with the ambiguous benefits of Tesla autopilot, and the dubious quality of Tesla mapping. I was surprised when we rented a Toyota last year that the lane keeping feature, hands-off around curves, functioned as well as or better than our M3. Of course, traffic adjusted cruise control has been around for years. These steps bode well for the future of auto safety and self driving technology. They also suggest Tesla could outsource technology to fill its gaps, if it chooses to. Hope they do.

 

[diplomat33]

They also suggest Tesla could outsource technology to fill its gaps, if it chooses to. Hope they do.

I doubt it. Elon is adamant about his vertical integration approach and doing everything in-house. It's why he dumped Mobileye and started AP2 in the first place.

 

[Yev000]

Every car I've had since 2004 had working adaptive cruise control, until the Tesla's.

The difference between AP and adaptive cruise control is auto steer (which is a beta feature). I fully agree that FSD is a complete waste of money today, especially here in UK.

I use both cruise control and AP regularly and they wok just fine.

 

[WVJohn]

Can't help but think that all who are so terribly critical of NoA are also poor passengers with others driving. I take pleasure in the fact that my Model X is a joy for me to drive.

 

[L-P-G]

And that right there is why instead of buying out my lease on my 90D I instead bought a used P90DL. It cost me the same as buying out my lease but I got a ton more features that aren't vaporware. Whenever I see FSD working for the public and not just a YouTube video I'll upgrade again, until then I'm perfectly fine with the abandonware that's AP1

 

[diplomat33]

I wonder if part of the reason for the disparity in experiences is simply statistics. Let's say, just for argument's sake, that NOA is 99% reliable. That sounds high. And certainly, that might be good enough for Tesla to release as a L2 system that requires driver attention. But with a large fleet driving all over the US, there are going to be plenty of folks who say NOA is great but 99% will still leave plenty of folks who will have bad experiences sometimes too.

 

[rich0]

I don't remember NOA ever missing an exit but I have taken over occasionally when I wasn't sure it would take an exit.

There is one exit in particular that it just takes WAY too long to take. Maybe it would eventually take it. I suspect it is relying on bad map data - the map shows the exit a bit further up the road than where it starts.

The problem is that by the time it starts I'd be passed on the right by somebody else who got into the lane as soon as it opened up.

You really need to get into exit lanes the moment they open up. At that point there is no traffic to merge with, and the lane I'm thinking of is very short. If you let somebody start to overtake you on the right you're going to end up having to slam your brakes in the main lane to let them pass and then get into the exit before passing it.

I also have to concur with the OP on most of his points. In particular NoA wants to start overtaking cars only a mile away from an exit, and often in situations where the exit lane started stacking up 1-2 miles before the exit. It makes zero sense to start overtaking cars in that situation. I mean, sure, I don't want to be behind somebody going 60 in a 70 zone, but at one mile from my exit I really just want to just avoid having to run somebody over to get off the road.

Another situation it doesn't handle well is adjacent exits. Usually I want to avoid the right lane for merging traffic, but then merge into that traffic for the next exit. In this situation it is often putting me in the right lane too soon, which means I'm dealing with merging traffic when the road is actually fairly clear. Now, in a situation where traffic is backing up I would of course want to be in the right the whole time.

 

[hmgolds]

I don't have NoA, so I can't comment on functionality. But I do remember how one analyst was discussing how Tesla had a significant advantage over other companies when it comes to self driving. The advantage was that Tesla has 10-20x the number of driving data points compared to other companies. Those data points are necessary to implement self driving and (I would assume) NoA. Of course, that does not mean the benefit of all that additional data has been realized yet.

 

[boonedocks]

Can't help but think that all who are so terribly critical of NoA are also poor passengers with others driving. I take pleasure in the fact that my Model X is a joy for me to drive.

OMG no...I would much prefer NOA to work well enough to use. As is my family get a little miffed if I use A/P vs me driving when everyone is in the car.

 

[ToddRLockwood]

I have an early 2016 MS with AP1. The AP1 system was more reliable prior to a software update done after a fatal accident involving a tractor trailer in Florida. That change raised the priority to the forward-facing radar and lowered the priority of the camera. Ever since then, AP1 has been more prone to misreading the environment in my experience.