Recent road trip - experience with auto steer and traffic aware cruise control

[chot2022]

I got my Tesla model3 awd month before last so I am a new driver. A few things i noticed on my recent LA to SF and back trip about auto steer and traffic aware cruise control:

Traffic aware cruise control sometimes seems to slow down gently and on other times maintains speed while approaching the vehicle in the lane and slows down very rapidly. Is this normal behavior?

During night time auto steer seems to do rapid regen/brakes when it is dark and the adjoining lane is occupied by trucks

I had several incidences of phantom breaking- more so when I was in the left most lane and it was quite annoying

I am wondering how folks deal with these quirks in the system. Do you use non traffic aware cruise control?

 

[Sophias_dad]

Do you use non traffic aware cruise control?

Is that even a 'thing' one can request?

 

[GtiMart]

There is no dumb cruise control, the only one we have is traffic-aware.

TACC will vary its "slowdown" depending on the speed of the vehicle in front. If it's almost as fast as you, it will slow down gently. If it's almost stopped, it will slow down fast.

TACC and Autopilot/FSD will slow down if adjacent lanes are much slower than you as a safety precaution. It's documented.

You can adjust some of this behavior in the autopilot tab of the settings.

 

[jackmott]

I have been dealing with cruise control by not using it.

 

[Supcom]

I got my Tesla model3 awd month before last so I am a new driver. A few things i noticed on my recent LA to SF and back trip about auto steer and traffic aware cruise control:

Traffic aware cruise control sometimes seems to slow down gently and on other times maintains speed while approaching the vehicle in the lane and slows down very rapidly. Is this normal behavior?

During night time auto steer seems to do rapid regen/brakes when it is dark and the adjoining lane is occupied by trucks

I had several incidences of phantom breaking- more so when I was in the left most lane and it was quite annoying

I am wondering how folks deal with these quirks in the system. Do you use non traffic aware cruise control?

When the car phantom brakes, I press the accelerator to stop the braking action and a speed the car back up to the set speed. Just don't press too hard or you'll give your passengers whiplash.

 

[EVRider-FL]

I drive from FL to New England every year and use Autosteer for all my highway driving. While there are some unexpected slowdowns, they don't happen often enough for me that I would consider not using Autosteer. I never use TACC without Autosteer. My car is a 2018 Model S with FSD (not the FSD Beta). I find Navigate on Autopilot somewhat annoying and sometimes turns that off, mostly due to questionable lane change suggestions.

 

[chot2022]

Is that even a 'thing' one can request?

I thought there was an option to turn off traffic aware cruise control - but turns out that’s the option to turn off just the chime

 

[chot2022]

There is no dumb cruise control, the only one we have is traffic-aware.

TACC will vary its "slowdown" depending on the speed of the vehicle in front. If it's almost as fast as you, it will slow down gently. If it's almost stopped, it will slow down fast.

TACC and Autopilot/FSD will slow down if adjacent lanes are much slower than you as a safety precaution. It's documented.

You can adjust some of this behavior in the autopilot tab of the settings.

Ok. That’s good to know that TACC will look at adjoining lanes too. I was on this steep incline and the trucks were really slow. It’s was almost midnight. It put on the brake/regen all of a sudden. I thought it was kind of dangerous. I don’t have the fsd or the half way package.

 

[chot2022]

I have been dealing with cruise control by not using it.

Yea - I really wish the dumb cruise control was available as an option. That way there’s a cruise control feature that i can be fully sure of in terms of how it will behave

 

[chot2022]

When the car phantom brakes, I press the accelerator to stop the braking action and a speed the car back up to the set speed. Just don't press too hard or you'll give your passengers whiplash.

I did try that but seems like there was a message on the screen something to do brakes - could not read it - not sure if that was a warning.

 

[GtiMart]

... I was on this steep incline and the trucks were really slow. It’s was almost midnight. It put on the brake/regen all of a sudden. ...

TACC/Autopilot will slow down when approaching the top of a crest when it cannot see the road anymore (we cannot see the road either). It's annoying but logical. As humans we assume the road will continue and will not have any obstacle and we keep our speed but the car is driving safer than us.

EDIT: I keep my foot close to the accelerator and push it a bit when that happens, to maintain speed. Once the crest is passed I let go of the accelerator. Doing this will not disengage TACC/Autopilot.

 

[chot2022]

TACC/Autopilot will slow down when approaching the top of a crest when it cannot see the road anymore (we cannot see the road either). It's annoying but logical. As humans we assume the road will continue and will not have any obstacle and we keep our speed but the car is driving safer than us.

Ok yea i had read that somewhere too. In this case we were not near the top however the road was curving away. Also there were cars in front and being me (and in both adjoining lanes)

 

[chot2022]

TACC/Autopilot will slow down when approaching the top of a crest when it cannot see the road anymore (we cannot see the road either). It's annoying but logical. As humans we assume the road will continue and will not have any obstacle and we keep our speed but the car is driving safer than us.

EDIT: I keep my foot close to the accelerator and push it a bit when that happens, to maintain speed. Once the crest is passed I let go of the accelerator. Doing this will not disengage TACC/Autopilot.

Ok that brings to mind - it turned off the TACC on a couple of occasions. It wasn’t good because of the significant slow down/regen. Other cars slow down gradually unless breaks are applied. Under what circumstances does the TACC get disengaged?

 

[GtiMart]

Touching the brakes, like most cruise control systems. Not applying torque to the steering wheel and not heeding the warnings, that sort of thing. Autopilot can freak out if it loses painted lines, there are other conditions.

 

[Supcom]

I did try that but seems like there was a message on the screen something to do brakes - could not read it - not sure if that was a warning.

The warning basically states that the car cannot apply brakes because you are using the accelerator. It's complaining because you are overriding its attempts to slow down, which is what you want to do when you have phantom braking.

 

[chot2022]

The warning basically states that the car cannot apply brakes because you are using the accelerator. It's complaining because you are overriding its attempts to slow down, which is what you want to do when you have phantom braking.

Yes that was the one - it disappeared before i could read it. This is really helpful!

 

[john5520]

The fairly hard braking when approaching stopped traffic is something Tesla should work on. I'm not quite sure, but I seem to remember this being less of an issue in the earlier firmware releases. Sometimes I wonder if it's going to stop in time. One would think this would be a fairly easy fix all things considered.

 

[chot2022]

The fairly hard braking when approaching stopped traffic is something Tesla should work on. I'm not quite sure, but I seem to remember this being less of an issue in the earlier firmware releases. Sometimes I wonder if it's going to stop in time. One would think this would be a fairly easy fix all things considered.

Yes same here. Sometimes the approach speed is so high, that i start wondering whether it is going to stop - so I keep my foot near the brake pedal. At other times however it is quite gentle. It seems to me some of this is affected by the number of cars distance setting. I have usually kept it at maximum, but it was getting difficult. So i changed it to 5 cars.

 

[chot2022]

I drive from FL to New England every year and use Autosteer for all my highway driving. While there are some unexpected slowdowns, they don't happen often enough for me that I would consider not using Autosteer. I never use TACC without Autosteer. My car is a 2018 Model S with FSD (not the FSD Beta). I find Navigate on Autopilot somewhat annoying and sometimes turns that off, mostly due to questionable lane change suggestions.

I feel a little uncomfortable with auto steer at times - especially when it takes those curves quite fast. It manages the curves quite well though. I still need to get used to it!

 

[EVRider-FL]

I feel a little uncomfortable with auto steer at times - especially when it takes those curves quite fast. It manages the curves quite well though. I still need to get used to it!

Autosteer will slow down for curves that it knows about, but if it slows down too much and you tap the accelerator to speed up, it will go back up to the set speed. If Autosteer doesn't slow down enough, you can always reduce the set speed temporarily, using the right scroll wheel in your Model 3.