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

[Battpower]

I find I automatically take over instantly when it does something unexpected - maybe I'm lucky but it doesn't cause any adrenaline rush - just mild irritation,

Yes. Highway / freeway driving is pretty good.

In UK apart from motorways ( because traffic flow is uniform in each direction) it is pretty unreliable at the moment. We have so many cases of parked cars right on edge of the highway, and fairly main roads where you regularly have to wait for oncoming traffic to clear before you can proceed.

Also not so encouraging that b-pillar cams are fogged up so often. Assuming they have a role in FSD, it had better be a minor one!

 

[run-the-joules]

It's absolutely useless for my commute, because it doesn't understand the time-based HOV lanes, doesn't understand left-side exits and onramps for HOV usage, and my entire commute is in the HOV lane that it desperately keeps trying to get out of it.

HOWEVER, I do like it for road trips. That said, yes, the overtaking logic is garbage, and it waits wayyyyyyyyyyy too long to do lane changes even when there's adequate pressure on the wheel torque sensor to let it know I'm there.

 

[diplomat33]

Ok so on the topic of "everyone has caught up"...let me ask, who is 'everyone'? What other car today can I purchase that will allow me to hit a button when I get onto a highway and have the car drive me, without interventions, to my work, which involves taking multiple exits and multiple highways?

I do this in my Model 3 every day. But I somehow doubt there's a single other car company that would give me this feature.

They don't offer "no confirmation" auto lane change or following a nav route like NOA but several companies do offer true hands-free lane keeping+TACC on the highway with stalk confirmed lane changes which AP/NOA does not do hands-free.

 

[Battpower]

A new experience for me today with NoA. (UK) joining M1 near East Midlands Airport heading south, nearly runs me into a wall at end of slip road. I'm used to it being last minute before merging, but this time it just wasn't going to bother merging at all!

 

[mrkisskiss]

In the US, did they actually ever release no-confirmation lane changes? They'd never be able to do this in Europe thanks to the 5 second rule (which makes auto-lane change useless, never mind the insane lane change suggestions that NoA makes - like into oncoming traffic sometimes). I thought they'd actually never released this even in the US, and that it always required a confirmation?

 

[aadams1278]

No confirmation lane changes are definitely released in the US. It does require you to have your hand on the wheel right at the beginning of the maneuver though, otherwise it won't do it. But you don't have to confirm with a stalk. You can enable or disable this in settings.

 

[diplomat33]

In the US, did they actually ever release no-confirmation lane changes? They'd never be able to do this in Europe thanks to the 5 second rule (which makes auto-lane change useless, never mind the insane lane change suggestions that NoA makes - like into oncoming traffic sometimes). I thought they'd actually never released this even in the US, and that it always required a confirmation?

In the US, they did release "no confirmation" auto lane changes awhile ago. But "no confirmation" means the driver does not need to use the stalk to initiate an auto lane change. But the car still has the AP nag before auto lane changes start.

 

[Soda Popinski]

In the US, they did release "no confirmation" auto lane changes awhile ago. But "no confirmation" means the driver does not need to use the stalk to initiate an auto lane change. But the car still has the AP nag before auto lane changes start.

You don't get an AP nag if your hand is on the wheel and it senses the torque. I also thought this was the case when I first tried it, but it was because I was being overly cautious and kept 2 hands on the wheel, balancing out the torque on the sensor.

 

[diplomat33]

You don't get an AP nag if your hand is on the wheel and it senses the torque. I also thought this was the case when I first tried it, but it was because I was being overly cautious and kept 2 hands on the wheel, balancing out the torque on the sensor.

Correct. I admit I sometimes get the nag because I sometimes take my hands off the wheel on NOA.

 

[run-the-joules]

You don't get an AP nag if your hand is on the wheel and it senses the torque. I also thought this was the case when I first tried it, but it was because I was being overly cautious and kept 2 hands on the wheel, balancing out the torque on the sensor.

the problem though is that even if it does sense the torque, it still waits roughly eight weeks to make the damned lane change, unlike requesting a lane change via the stalk which is like an excited puppy reacting to someone throwing a cheese slice in the adjacent lane

 

[iqless]

Ok so on the topic of "everyone has caught up"...let me ask, who is 'everyone'? What other car today can I purchase that will allow me to hit a button when I get onto a highway and have the car drive me, without interventions, to my work, which involves taking multiple exits and multiple highways?

I do this in my Model 3 every day. But I somehow doubt there's a single other car company that would give me this feature.

Uhh... most of them? Some of them have lane keep that's on par with Autopilot that doesn't even require you to touch the steering wheel.

So... more automatic than Tesla, in some cases.

As for 'taking exits'... you and I have a disagreement there as where I live that really isn't a thing

 

[clydeiii]

As for 'taking exits'... you and I have a disagreement there as where I live that really isn't a thing

Huh, what do you think it is about the exists in the Maryland that is different from the exits where you live?

 

[Routybouty]

The exits around here are really decelerations lanes before the exit. NoA dives into the lane because it's following the randomly painted new lane line. It dives so hard into the lane it runs on to or past the right line. Then after that fun, the speed doesn't decrease until you're AT the exit. Not very fun going 70mph down to 45mph. The other issue for me they gimped the acceleration from 30mph to 60-65ish making lane merging worthless. NoA is useless for me, but I use AP everyday. It's too bad.

 

[PRLM3]

There may be some objective differences in how NOA and AP behave from car-to-car, region-to-region and just statistical blips, but I also suspect a significant portion of the different "experience" is subjective and depends more on the driver's expectations and reactions than differences in how NOA actually behaves.

For example, I use NOA much more than my wife does mostly because she gets impatient that it doesn't pass quickly/aggressively enough even in Mad Max mode. I'm usually a fairly "spirited" driver myself but with NOA on I am fine with a more relaxed approach and don't mind that it makes different decisions than I would.

On the other hand, when I'm a passenger and my wife is zipping in and out of traffic, I often wish she would turn on NOA.

Yeah I think this observation is spot on. I sometimes wish Max were more aggressive, as I also sometimes wish it would move out of the passing lane more frequently - although it now does this with a recent update and the onscreen messages are more specific about why the lane change is being requested (still have confirmation enabled). But I've done frequent road trips that are 4-8 hours across FL interstates and even done a jaunt to mountains of NC from south FL -- and AP and NOA are ***amazing*** in my opinion. I particularly love that in both modes now you can self-initiate a lane change with just the blinker, and the system will detect/look, and then initiate and execute the lane change without any intervention. (Of course I do look, but theoretically you wouldn't need to.) This is huge because it means you don't need to break AP/NOA to self-initiate a lane change.

You can count executions and calculate percentages and obviously the engineers are doing that. But for me it's not about that it's about the overall experience. I go 3 hours without a significant correction as the system happily speeds me and wife (who loves it) along. I want to move over -- flip of the finger while the car checks for me, no red on screen, bam, system moves us over. I hit a stretch of slowdown and suddenly it's a 0-20 MPH for the next 25 minutes -- I could care less. I get content to stay in one lane and let M3 do the stop/go/stop/go, while I chuckle about how this would suck in most any other car. And yeah, I'm multi-tasking, downloading songs on spotify, etc. (Please note: I've had this car 15 months and intimately familiar with any shortcomings, and still maintain attention on the road. I'm not saying I take my eyes/attention off the road for sustained periods; I don't.) But again, the experience overall is a marked reduction in stress and increase in pleasure about getting from point A to point B.

Just my opinion but to decry the whole system because of a single exit on one route and similar complaints in the OP is just crazy. Having said that, yes it's a heckuva long way from full autonomous FSD, and hello!, of course Elon overpromises. But it's already amazing, and the journey forward is a blast -- send that next upgrade!

 

[malcolm]

Yes "everyone has caught up" as long as you repeat the same old mistake and believe their press releases and curated videos.

And caught up to what exactly?

Everyone including Tesla just have cars covered with sensors of varying ridiculousness, providing the same old cruise control and a bit of extra functionality depending on location/road type/weather.

At the moment NoA is just a reminder that Nobody owns Autonomy.

 

[iqless]

After driving a regular car with simple adaptive cruise & lane keep assist for 9 hours last week, I have to say I feel even stronger about my points.

The best part about Autopilot is undeniably its great capability for highway cruising and how much less processing power you have to spend with your brain while on the highway. Without Autopilot, the extremely simple driving task of highway cruising takes a toll if you do it for hours and hours, as you have to make small adjustments on acceleration/braking and make small steering inputs - which are very simple tasks but they occupy a space in your brain and this small strain eventually adds up. Autopilot gets rid of 99% of this (not 100% since you still have to touch the wheel & be on the lookout for stuff).

The second best part is how easy it makes stop & go in heavy traffic.

Well, simple ACC & lane keep assist doesn't get rid of 99% of this strain, but it probably gets rid of about 80% of it. (My car's LKA is actually very similar to Autopilot, turns out - not like earlier implementations where you bounce off of lanes constantly) Stop & go traffic works exactly the same as AP, too.

All this with an extremely un-fancy system that is not even advertised.

As NoA was completely worthless to me because of the constant anxiety it introduced, the rest of the AP system (lane centering) was the only important part for me. And a regular car can give me most of its benefits, turns out.

I'm sure in the coming years Tesla will improve AP, but my point is that at this moment it's functionally the same as the 2016 system - in 2016, that stuff was extremely advanced, but now it just really isn't, compared to other brands and manufacturers.

 

[notrhj]

I haven't seen an update to this good study, but this showed that even the original 2018 Model 3 was much better than everyone else, even the older Tesla AP1 (here represented by the Model S).

IIHS examines driver assistance features in road, track tests

View attachment 519953

Yup, and the constant whine of “well other auto makers” and “just you wait for the big three” continue to sound like tire noise.

 

[Candleflame]

Yes. Highway / freeway driving is pretty good.

In UK apart from motorways ( because traffic flow is uniform in each direction) it is pretty unreliable at the moment. We have so many cases of parked cars right on edge of the highway, and fairly main roads where you regularly have to wait for oncoming traffic to clear before you can proceed.

Also not so encouraging that b-pillar cams are fogged up so often. Assuming they have a role in FSD, it had better be a minor one!

i learned to drive in the uk. Compared to lets say continental europe the uk needs its own skillset to drive and its hard enough for a foreigner to drive there with the rediculous narrow roads, often blocked by parked cars. A lot of the traffic flow relies on you giving way to other drivers even when you have right of way and not drive a big SUV around. This gets further complicated by the fact that the UK has decided to decriminalize speeding and traffic laws by just having a highway code and not many speed signs, stop signs, traffic signs etc, often leaving it up to the driver to decide what the best course of action is. (This may not be immediately obvious if you dont drive abroad much).

My dad picked me up once coming from Germany - he hired a car in Eastbourne and the only car they had was a Mercedes SUV. He almost cried when he had to drive from Brighton to Haywards Heath via little country roads and towns.

It's no joke even for someone whos driven cars abroad for 40 years and for AP it will be even harder.

 

[Battpower]

for AP it will be even harder.

I agree with most of your observations, but the number of speed cameras we have does not quite fit with the idea of decriminalisation.

If you study the Highway Code, you discover that on certain roads, the presence of street lighting dictates a 30 mph limit if not signed to the contrary. If there is a central divide then the rules might be different, and on a Motorway, it's 70mph.

Absolutely agree that driving convention (which has a lot to do with safety) varies from region to region and even within neighbourhoods. I have lost track as to if up hill or down hill traffic has priority when passing parked cars that block the carriageway or if it even makes any difference now. (used to be a rule similar to our Red & Amber traffic light phase that related to allowing for getting your car to stop or go!)

Realistically, AP will not crack these situations while there are still cars with humans at the controls. And, paradoxically, there will always be human drivers at the controls while there are still so many situations that AP can't handle.

 

[mikes_fsd]

Here is what I would like to avoid.
Generalities like this, is why good engineers are afraid to take on great projects.

Realistically, AP will not crack these situations while there are still cars with humans at the controls. And, paradoxically, there will always be human drivers at the controls while there are still so many situations that AP can't handle.

In 2009 they said EV's will NEVER make it and that Tesla was just making toys for the rich.
In 2012 they said Rockets will NEVER land propulsively and that Musk is known to not deliver on time.

We can point to specific problems, and see if we can find a solution to them, but making such broad overarching claims is not helpful to the discussion.