PSA: CAREFUL--Autopilot sudden braking

[lampcord]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one here who doesn't have problems with TACC. I commute 20 miles to and from work every day in pretty heavy traffic. Up and down from dead stop to 65 (I never go more than 5 over speed limit)

I get in my lane, turn TACC on and pretty much let the car drive me home. Maybe 2 times a week I get a mild, unexpected slowdown but I just keep my foot on the gas and am ready for it. Never had one bad enough to spill my coffee.

Maybe I'm just lucky?

 

[Angkor79]

Yes. I have them, too. They need to be polished out. You’ll notice under a light that there’s probably a paint imperfection like a nib right in the center of the halo - the halo is the result of wet sanding and then not polishing it out. It’s annoying, but pretty normal, unfortunately.

Thanks good to know. I really like the car just small imperfections that they need to iron out.

 

[Angkor79]

I call it "dancing cars." At first they just twitched side to side, bumping into each other. But now they do that and also twirl. Also, when I pull out of my garage the car sees a non-existent truck where the garage wall is. The display seems to have gotten worse at showing what's around me. I don't rely on the display for surrounding traffic, so it's just kind of funny.

Lol, dancing cars! My son asked me why its twirling and I had no answer for him. I take a friends out and they ask me why is the cars doing that and i'm like ummmm good question. I hope they can somehow fix these small annoying things.

 

[daniel]

If you buy FSD option is there a way to just use adaptive cruise control without the other auto-driving stuff? I want to get the FSD just so I have it when (if) they ever get it working, but I don't want to deal with bugs like this so I'd rather just use regular adaptive cruise control until they get the bugs worked out.

One click down on the stalk engages TACC without autopilot. Two clicks down engages both TACC and Autopilot. TACC is on any time Autopilot is on, but you can use TACC without Autopilot.

But I will say that even with the minor inconveniences, I absolutely LOVE EAP.

It will be a long time before FSD is working so well that the driver does not need to be alert and ready to intervene at an instant's notice. If you're really not willing to deal with the minor quirks of Autopilot, you probably would be wasting your money paying for FSD now. And if all you want is TACC, and not AP, you'll be paying a lot of money for that one feature. Note that the car without AP still has conventional (non-adaptive) cruise control.

But you might want to give AP a try before you decide you don't want it. It took me two weeks to get up the courage to try it, and now I love it.

 

[Dan203]

One click down on the stalk engages TACC without autopilot. Two clicks down engages both TACC and Autopilot. TACC is on any time Autopilot is on, but you can use TACC without Autopilot.

But I will say that even with the minor inconveniences, I absolutely LOVE EAP.

It will be a long time before FSD is working so well that the driver does not need to be alert and ready to intervene at an instant's notice. If you're really not willing to deal with the minor quirks of Autopilot, you probably would be wasting your money paying for FSD now. And if all you want is TACC, and not AP, you'll be paying a lot of money for that one feature. Note that the car without AP still has conventional (non-adaptive) cruise control.

But you might want to give AP a try before you decide you don't want it. It took me two weeks to get up the courage to try it, and now I love it.

If you buy a car now AP is included by default. There is no option for standard cruise control. At least not on the Performance I'm looking at. The only option is to upgrade to FSD for $6k. I think getting FSD just for the novelty will be worth it. And if it does ever actually function as promised it will be awesome. But if it annoys me I wanted to make sure there is a way to turn it off.

 

[Mr-T]

I have this happen to me quite frequently lately. Seems to have gotten much worse with the .24 release. I know it’s upped the pucker factor on more than one driver behind me. It seems to happen on Adaptive Cruise Control with or without AP engaged. I agree, this is a rather serious safety issue. I’d much rather they fix this instead of spending their time developing games.

 

[Mr-T]

This happens to me almost daily. I commute a total of 80 miles M-F, mostly Interstate And uninterrupted State Routes. Recently I had it happen 3 times in just a few miles. It seemed to get worse with the 2019.24.4 update. I am positive that more than one driver behind me has cursed me because of this. This is a safety issue and one of these days, someone is going to be seriously injured or killed from this.

I sure wish Tesla would stop it with the games and focus on developing fixes for this and other upgrades central to the primary function of the car.

 

[Mr-T]

Sorry for the double post. I had network issues

 

[Angkor79]

I have this happen to me quite frequently lately. Seems to have gotten much worse with the .24 release. I know it’s upped the pucker factor on more than one driver behind me. It seems to happen on Adaptive Cruise Control with or without AP engaged. I agree, this is a rather serious safety issue. I’d much rather they fix this instead of spending their time developing games.

I agree, lets just get the driving portion of it right.

 

[T3M3T]

Yup...scary...when it sees big shadow (under pass or big truck), it just freaks out.

 

[rpreuss]

Sorry for the double post. I had network issues

No Problem! I think your last sentence in both posts deserved repeating. My 2010 Fusion Hybrid had a much better adaptive cruise control, never phantom braked, and just used the forward facing camera. I am sure with more concentration on fixing the problem of phantom braking would be a tremendous safety improvement. I will not use TACC or AP if there is anyone following me.

 

[Twiglett]

not sure why people think the devs working on driving features are the same as the devs working on games.
There's more than one developer working at Tesla

 

[Angkor79]

not sure why people think the devs working on driving features are the same as the devs working on games.
There's more than one developer working at Tesla

Yeah I think we know that, but it seems like the driving features are updated without any release notes.

 

[Twiglett]

Yeah I think we know that, but it seems like the driving features are updated without any release notes.

yep - and yet we get more and more posts saying the same old thing - "Tesla should be working on <insert feature here> not games"

 

[neonshaun]

I was on firmware 15.x until 2 nights ago when it updated to 28.2.

Yesterday on my way to AND from work the car randomly slammed on the brakes.
I'm afraid to use the cruise control/self driving features now. With the older firmware that had never happened to me.

 

[Dan203]

Seems like adaptive cruise control should just use radar, just like every other car, rather then trying to use cameras.

Although even with just radar I've had weird things like this on my BMW too. I've been on a few small 2 lane roads with relatively high speeds and had it detect a car in a turn lane as stopping in front of me and slamming on the breaks. I also had it happen once with an oncoming car that was passing on the other side but no where near actually hitting me. Sometimes we forget these are just sensors and don't have common sense.

 

[lampcord]

not sure why people think the devs working on driving features are the same as the devs working on games.
There's more than one developer working at Tesla

I think people just mean shift more resources to practical features and fewer to 'fun' features. Like any software company they have a budget and development priorities and every $1 allocated to one area is $1 less to another. So in that way it does make sense to say more features / less games.

 

[insaneoctane]

I haven't been seeing this too much until 28.2 . I probably drive 350 miles per week WITH EAP ENGAGED. Ever since I took 28.2 on Tuesday, I've seen it significantly more than before. I'll keep an eye on things (and keep my right foot close to the accelerator) and continue my evaluation, but at first glance it looks like Tesla needs to fix the NN here. I kind of hate to recommend this because other aspects of EAP have shown improvement and I don't really want to lose those....but I suspect Tesla is likely to just completely revert the NN back to a less phantom brake-y instance that will back out other welcome improvements....

 

[Nikola3327]

Maybe my expectations were too high, but After having a M3 for a few months, I’ve been sorely disappointed in AP and TACC. I think the LKAS (lane keep assist system) on my 2016 Honda Accord was better than AP. I didn’t have to disengage it just to change lanes.

The Accord also had a forward collision braking system. I only recall it phantom braking ~5 times in 25,000mi. Tesla’s TACC phantom brakes wayyyyy too often. I wish there was a way to turn off TACC in favor of just having basic CC. My Accord had that and it was the first thing I did. It’s ACC worked okay, but like Tesla’s it followed too far behind and then cars jump in front of you and it slams on brakes to adjust. The Tesla does allow you to get slightly closer than the Accord, but it’s still too far to be useful in moderate highway traffic and it begins braking far too early and then I have to hit the gas (which defeats the whole purpose).

I had super high expectations for AP and almost sprung for FSD. Glad I didn’t. It’s a shame too, because I don’t think it would take much (resources) to significantly improve the AP UX.

 

[Nikola3327]

I think people just mean shift more resources to practical features and fewer to 'fun' features. Like any software company they have a budget and development priorities and every $1 allocated to one area is $1 less to another. So in that way it does make sense to say more features / less games.

“In the software World you spend 90% of your budget on the first 90% of the project...Then you spend another 90% on the remaining 90%.” -Overheard at a developers conference.