Radarless Driving Report? Anyone?

[WADan]

I picked up my MYLR yesterday and put 450 miles on it in the last 24 hours. I don't have a frame of reference for radar-AP, but I can tell you what i've noticed on this trip.

For the most part it's good when on the highway. There were a few places where it got confused, when the lane is really wide on merging roads (ie a freeway junction), it gets confused and doesn't know what to do. Also when there's an exit for a freeway junction, AP didn't know whether it should stay on the highway I was on or exit, and ended up just disengaging and telling me to take control.

There are still phantom breaking problems, where when I come alongside a big rig on a two lane highway, sometimes it will suddenly break. I've even had it phantom break when the truck was about a mile or so ahead of me and no other cars were near me.

AP lane change is awesome. Nothing else to say about it, but easily one of my favorite features.

The most annoying thing on the highway is autopilot jail for going faster than the limit. This is a problem with AP being reduced to 75MPH. I'm driving I-40 in AZ which is a 75mph speed limit. So if I come up to a truck that is going say 65mph, but there's a line of vehicles coming up along side me, I have to hit the accelerator pretty quick to get over or else I'm stuck behind the truck until I can merge. But if AP detects you going more than 75, it will disengage and put you in AP jail until you stop and go in to park and then back to drive. This might not have been as much of an issue at 90mph, but at 75mph it was annoying and I ended up going long distances without AP because I didn't want to pull over. You can mitigate it by disengaging AP first, but when you're in a hurry to pass someone, if it's not second nature, you're going to get stuck in AP jail.

On mountain driving, curvy roads, it was very iffy. One point driving 35mph on a road by my house, there was a break in the double yellow line and the car jerked in to the oncoming lane (no cars coming luckily) and i had to forefully turn the steering wheel back to get back in to my line. It wasn't gradual, it jerked pretty hard. I have no idea what caused that, but I did save the video so I'm going to have to go back and review it.

One other issue, I'm not sure if it's an issue with radar or not, but it will want to change lanes when people are coming up faster than me in the lane it wants to change to. It don't care if you're going to impede the other vehicle, it wants to change lanes anyway.

Aside from all that, it was pretty good, and if I didn't keep getting stuck in AP jail I would have enjoyed it much more on the 7+ hour drive I was on. 90% of the time it worked fine and made this long drive much more enjoyable than it's ever been.

oh and auto high beams at night keep brighting everyone, including flashing the person in front of me, so yeah that needs to be fixed.

I just completed a road trip of about 2000 miles, and from what you described AP seems to be worse than before!

 

[DayTrippin]

Ok, tried my first drive with AP at night. I took it on the same road where it thought it was Mr. Magoo in the daytime. I was ready for it this time. This time we slowed down to 35 from the post 45 mph and hit the afterburners after the turn to speed up to the speed limit. Good thing my wife wasn't in the car as she likely would have puked. The turn wasn't smooth and it sort of changed the apex of the turn about 3 times.

This road has big, wide, clearly marked white or yellow lines bounding the edge of the lane. The auto high beams engaged along with the AP engagement. Now to give credit where due, they didn't flash on and off like lights at a rave. The choice of when to be on or off was fairly close to what I would have done given the oncoming traffic. I think it held the brights on about a half second too long before dimming.

I followed this road down to a roundabout of about a 150' radius. It was doing well for the initial 25 degrees of turn. Then the wheel started shuddering, it did a quick stutter step to fake out the defenders, headed right for a second, then a hard left, then staright toward the concrete barrier in the middle and I took over before it hit something.

It clearly had no idea what the heck to do and scared the you know what out of me because as soon as I took over the wheel, the TACC immediately mashed the throttle to accelerate back up to speed. For the idiots getting in the back seat and riding with this system, you are literally are putting your life in the coding of a system built on more hype than ability. Maybe some of you have had better luck, but I'd hate to see this thing in a situation where visibility is diminished.

The only place I feel even remotely comfortable using AP is on the highway. No wonder there is a big beta label by it when you go to enable it. The rest of the car is a 9/10 out of 10. I would give the AP about a 2 or 3 at best overall and maybe a 5/6 on a daylit highway. Now I totally understand when they say AP was trying to kill them. I thought it might have been a bit of hyperbole, not now.

I need to clearly understand the APs limitations before I turn it over to my wife.

 

[Fourdoor]

I followed this road down to a roundabout of about a 150' radius. It was doing well for the initial 25 degrees of turn. Then the wheel started shuddering, it did a quick stutter step to fake out the defenders, headed right for a second, then a hard left, then staright toward the concrete barrier in the middle and I took over before it hit something.

So, it took the roundabout like your average American My laugh at your post is due to the line in red


Keith

 

[DayTrippin]

Maybe the UK versions do better with roundabouts...

I don't want to seem overly harsh, but after less than 20 miles of driving with AP, the entire FSD hype seems like snake oil hucksters as my grandad would say. If FSD is based on AP, and AP is this bad so far, they should pay me to beta test it. At this rate it will never get out of beta. This is the biggest disappointment of the car so far.

It is like looking at my mother in law. She is a beautiful lady until you get to this gigantic mole. Or what my grandma used to call euphemistically "beauty marks." All I can think of is the Austin Powers Moley routine when I see her. The AP issue is like the big mole on the face of my Tesla.

I do hope it will get better soon. Not like in Elon time soon, but normal people's time 'soon'. Thankfully we had this thread so I was at least somewhat prepared. Or as Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool... that trusts AP."

 

[blissdancer]

I have ordered FSD, hoping for autonomy in case I need it. I'm 69.

Me too but I am beginning to wonder if it will be FSD in my lifetime.

 

[Fourdoor]

Me too but I am beginning to wonder if it will be FSD in my lifetime.

I expect full self drive in my lifetime... but it will not come from individual cars being intelligent enough and having enough sensors to drive themselves. It will come from a "hive mind" where the every FSD equipped car on the road is connected to my car and every other FSD equipped car on the road and reporting road conditions / accidents / weather events / pothole locations / road debris and the distributed computing amongst all the FSD equipped cars on the road will be able to make intelligent decisions. With that type of system FSD is possible and it will even take note of potholes and things like that to avoid.

In the mean time, I expect the traditional auto makers to pull ahead of Tesla (at first on highways, then on secondary roads) because they are willing to do road mapping and use a variety of sensors.

Keith

 

[maus92]

I've had my MY for about 10 days. My experience with AP and Autosteer can be summed up with one word: Unsat. The AP system randomly brakes the car for no reason, and at highways speeds on a busy Interstate, that could lead to you being rear-ended. It happens both day and night, although I have not used the system in rain. Last night on 50 mile highway trip, the AP randomly braked / aggressively slowed 3 times; twice on a straightaway for no apparent reason, and once on a gently curving overpass that had a disabled car on the left breakdown lane (aka out of the travel lane.). Autosteer has trouble staying centered in the lane; it bounces within the lane markers - it doesn't seem to find a comfortable track. Autosteer *might* be a bit better in 2021.4.18.2 vs. 18.1.

I use adaptive cruise control *a lot* in other vehicles. Tesla needs to figure out how to make AP more like ACC and less prone to random braking / false alerts.

 

[DanDi58]

Maybe the UK versions do better with roundabouts...

I don't want to seem overly harsh, but after less than 20 miles of driving with AP, the entire FSD hype seems like snake oil hucksters as my grandad would say. If FSD is based on AP, and AP is this bad so far, they should pay me to beta test it. At this rate it will never get out of beta. This is the biggest disappointment of the car so far.

It is like looking at my mother in law. She is a beautiful lady until you get to this gigantic mole. Or what my grandma used to call euphemistically "beauty marks." All I can think of is the Austin Powers Moley routine when I see her. The AP issue is like the big mole on the face of my Tesla.

I do hope it will get better soon. Not like in Elon time soon, but normal people's time 'soon'. Thankfully we had this thread so I was at least somewhat prepared. Or as Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool... that trusts AP."

Do you have FSD or the basic AP? Reason I ask is that AP is really designed for highway use, as noted in the OM. Yeah, I use it around town a bit but generally only on higher-speed roads. It works well for me, but honestly, I much prefer driving the car myself as it's more fun that way.... ;-)

 

[GeezerSquid]

Elon said we are getting new version V9 in June. I expect that to be a great upgrade. Have some faith. And there is no way in hell that any legacy car company will pass Tesla in software. (imho)!!!!

 

[Fourdoor]

Elon said we are getting new version V9 in June. I expect that to be a great upgrade. Have some faith. And there is no way in hell that any legacy car company will pass Tesla in software. (imho)!!!!

You know that Ford, GM, Nissan, VW... pretty much everybody has adaptive cruise control and auto lane centering now? Why do you think they are soooooo far behind Tesla?

Main reasons I went with the Y are longer range, more performance, and faster charging (I road trip a lot) AP is nice, but is certainly is not unique!

Keith

 

[WADan]

Don’t give up on Elon just yet. If Tesla have the data (and I believe they do), it should tell them when radar helps and does not help with driving. Tesla bets the farm on vision, and I don’t believe they are irresponsible to the point of doing that blindlly!

 

[MY-Y]

Got a chuckle about Tesla not betting on vision blindly.

Personally, I think the radar is gone due to the chip shortage. I also think it'll be back. AI isn't magic - it cannot create information that's not there. Camera-based distance and velocity information will be quite inferior to radar. Fog, rain, snow, headlights, and a low sun make this much worse for cameras, but don't impact radar much. Do whatever you want with AI algorithms, physics is physics. I really want to know if a software update will stop using my radar so I can stop upgrading at that point (at least for a while).

 

[WADan]

Maybe we expect too much of AP/FSD!
Under certain situations, human should not be driving at all (when you can’t see well ahead), so Tesla vision should not be able too.

 

[DayTrippin]

Got a chuckle about Tesla not betting on vision blindly.

Personally, I think the radar is gone due to the chip shortage. I also think it'll be back. AI isn't magic - it cannot create information that's not there. Camera-based distance and velocity information will be quite inferior to radar. Fog, rain, snow, headlights, and a low sun make this much worse for cameras, but don't impact radar much. Do whatever you want with AI algorithms, physics is physics. I really want to know if a software update will stop using my radar so I can stop upgrading at that point (at least for a while).

I have thought it was supply constraints from the outset and there was some BS spin they put on it to sell it. If they put it back, it will screw a bunch of owners. I could see it playing out on the secondary market that you don't want one if it doesn't have radar and maybe taking a significant hit on resale.

I don't see how Elon could introduce it back in without losing face or at leasta coming up with some BS answer to why they are putting back in.

 

[DanDi58]

I have thought it was supply constraints from the outset and there was some BS spin they put on it to sell it. If they put it back, it will screw a bunch of owners. I could see it playing out on the secondary market that you don't want one if it doesn't have radar and maybe taking a significant hit on resale.

I don't see how Elon could introduce it back in without losing face or at leasta coming up with some BS answer to why they are putting back in.

They won't. They've been talking about a camera-centric solution for years. So maybe a parts constraint caused them to do this early, but this has been their strategy for a long time.

 

[Fourdoor]

I have thought it was supply constraints from the outset and there was some BS spin they put on it to sell it. If they put it back, it will screw a bunch of owners. I could see it playing out on the secondary market that you don't want one if it doesn't have radar and maybe taking a significant hit on resale.

I don't see how Elon could introduce it back in without losing face or at leasta coming up with some BS answer to why they are putting back in.

Saw an article earlier this week talking about how Tesla put in paperwork with the FCC for millimeter wavelength radar in Jan of 2021... if they have to put radar back they can spin it as a transition to an upgraded radar system... and retrofit it to those who don't have the old radar system. Either they planned to transition to millimeter wavelength radar and got hosed by new supply chain, or they got hosed by their old supplier. In either case I don't' think they would be filing FCC paperwork on millimeter wave radar if the switch to "pure vision" was planned.

Keith

 

[vanjwilson]

Has anyone driven their Radarless MY home yet? I'm interested in any Autopilot drives and how it performed. I know you're excited, but let's hear it!!

I got my radar-less MY this past Saturday, with basic Autopilot, and so far it's been about what I expected. It does a good job on interstates, reasonably well on 4-lane roads, and okay on 2-lane roads.

I'm not used to AutoSteer--this is my first Tesla--but I have been getting more comfortable using Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) on my wife's BMW i3 over the last couple of years, so I've felt comfortable using TACC in the Tesla as soon as the cameras calibrated. I think that the cruise control is much better on the Tesla, even without radar, than on the i3. The i3 has plenty of phantom breaking events, doesn't handle coming up to an already stopped car well at all, and often just gives up in stop-and-go traffic. I've already learned to trust the Tesla much more. I was stuck in terrible afternoon traffic for over 20 minutes a couple of days ago, and I used TACC the whole time. (It was a straight flat stretch so I didn't bother with AutoSteer.)

I'm still learning to trust AutoSteer, but that would be true even if it had radar. But the more times I try it, the more I trust it. Since I read a lot about it beforehand, I was prepared for the most jarring thing about AutoSteer, which is the way it quickly moves you to the center of your lane. I never quite realized how off-center I, and most other folks, drive. I still get a little skittish when AP passes cars, because I would "cheat" it toward the opposite lane line if I were driving manually.

I did let it drive for over 20 miles on an interstate with light traffic last night, and it did great. I finally disengaged it when I got into a small city, but I soon decided to turn it back on.

(I haven't driven in the rain much yet, except the day I got it, when it rained a little. It only refused to come on one time, maybe because it was raining moderately, but then I tried a couple of minutes later and it came on and worked fine. However, I still wasn't trying it much that first day.)

And as for phantom breaking on the Tesla, it's only happened 3 times. Twice in quick succession the other morning, when I was driving directly into the sun, and I quickly gunned it manually to get back up to speed, because it surprised me. Then again, during the during the 20-mile nighttime AP "run", when 2 cars came into view far ahead as it overtook them cresting a little hill. It slowed from 75 to 69 for a few seconds, and I was less jumpy and so decided to see what it would do. It quickly accelerated back to its set speed, and I passed both calls while still in AP over the next couple of minutes.

I suspect that radar-less AP will improve at about the same pace that I will get more comfortable with it. And since I'm not willing to pay $10K (or more soon) for FSD, I will wait until there is a subscription before I try that.

 

[Brando]

I am most interested in how it does in crappy weather and poor visibility.

I'd tell you, but I couldn't see. So I decided to get off the road.

 

[DanDi58]

I'm still learning to trust AutoSteer, but that would be true even if it had radar. But the more times I try it, the more I trust it. Since I read a lot about it beforehand, I was prepared for the most jarring thing about AutoSteer, which is the way it quickly moves you to the center of your lane. I never quite realized how off-center I, and most other folks, drive. I still get a little skittish when AP passes cars, because I would "cheat" it toward the opposite lane line if I were driving manually.

Yes, I'm the same - it's not so much an issue with AS for me, but it does such a great job keeping you centered that I get a little nervous when the car (or truck) next to me drifts a bit in their own lane - normally I would also cheat a bit towards the other side of my lane. So I don't really use it in heavy traffic. But it's great on the open road. I'm still on the SW update before they eliminated the radar so am looking forward to comparing it when I get the update that eliminates the radar.

Congrats on getting the car!

 

[tallevdude]

New MYLR owner as of this week, no FSD, and can't compare it to radar because I haven't driven a Tesla other than this one ... but concur with what most people are seeing here. It's VERY unreliable at night when off the highway. Even on roads that appear to be well marked, at night autosteer will drop every few hundred feet, where it worked much better in daylight on the same stretch. The Auto high beams flicker on and off (I think maye the reflection of the light from road signs confuses it, making it think it's seeing a car's headlights?).

I adore the car for all the reasons you'd expect - it's all true. But I do think AP is oversold, especially at night. Hopefully I'll get a better feel for the system and learn its quirks. It's far from seamless.