Second Failure of AutoPilot: Identical Location (2019.8.3) - Radar Failure

[GolanB]

This afternoon, while coming back home from the office, I experienced a nearly identical failure of AutoPilot while driving through the Holland Tunnel to NYC. This is the second time in a week this occurred while running 2019.8.3.

In both cases, I received the "red hands" warning to take over driving immediately.

In both cases, the car lost visibility of its surroundings, including road markers, and vehicles.

In this case, the road markers re-appeared about 9 minutes before the surrounding vehicles did on the display.

In both cases, the AutoPilot (autosteering function) was not available for re-engagement for approximately 10 minutes until I was well out of the Holland Tunnel, and back in NY. The error I received was "Reduced Front Radar Visibility."

In this case, I was able to submit a bug report, in the last case, the mic was no longer receiving input.

I was able to get through to Tesla more quickly this time and spoke with a representative who did a diagnostic and escalated to second level support (escalation had not happened the first time.) Interestly, he recalled speaking to someone else who had a radar failure while driving near an airport.

Here is a YouTube video of what it looked like shortly after the failure, and before I was able to re-engage AutoPilot:

 

[MattMatt]

Hmm your story triggered a memory for me, I was out driving in the mild of nowhere California near Trona, I rounded a bend and there was a some sort of spinning dish directly in front of me (found it here Google Maps) as soon as the dish rotated to pointing at the car Autopilot kicked off and gave some message about radar failure. I pulled of the road after a little bit, checked the front of the car, opened the frunk, and then everything reset. This was back on 12/03/2017, so the error messages were a little different.

 

[ckoval7]

Last week I drove through the Hampton Roads Bridge-tunnel and had AP crap out on me. My theory is that the AP system relies pretty heavily on the GPS, and the system goes out until GPS lock is re-established. There could be more to the story, or maybe I'm totally off base, but it's what makes the most sense to me. The car doesn't provide enough diagnostic information to the user, unfortunately.

 

[alee]

Ok, thought I was going crazy. This happened to me today in the Holland, both going to NJ and returning back to NY.

From NY to NJ, Autopilot enabled, and I got the red hands "take over immediately" warning, AP disabled, no ghost cars, etc.

From NJ back to NY, Autopilot *NOT* enabled, and I lost all radar again - no ghost cars, no steering wheel icon, etc.

Theory 1 - there's some very powerful radar inside the tunnel to keep track of traffic flow, and it's overcoming the Autopilot radar.
Theory 2 - the amount of reflections from other radar sources bouncing around inside the tunnel triggers an Autopilot system fault

This is with 2019.12.1.2

 

[ckoval7]

Ok, thought I was going crazy. This happened to me today in the Holland, both going to NJ and returning back to NY.

From NY to NJ, Autopilot enabled, and I got the red hands "take over immediately" warning, AP disabled, no ghost cars, etc.

From NJ back to NY, Autopilot *NOT* enabled, and I lost all radar again - no ghost cars, no steering wheel icon, etc.

Theory 1 - there's some very powerful radar inside the tunnel to keep track of traffic flow, and it's overcoming the Autopilot radar.
Theory 2 - the amount of reflections from other radar sources bouncing around inside the tunnel triggers an Autopilot system fault

This is with 2019.12.1.2

I've had this happen in other tunnels. I think AP relies on reliable GPS data, which it can't get when it's going through a tunnel. The car auto-reboots the AP computer due to the prolonged signal loss. This is just my theory though.

 

[alee]

I've had this happen in other tunnels. I think AP relies on reliable GPS data, which it can't get when it's going through a tunnel. The car auto-reboots the AP computer due to the prolonged signal loss. This is just my theory though.

I don't think it's GPS related - the computer vision stuff is supposed to be able to handle unmapped roads although unable to do anything NoA-related on those roads. It "dead reckons" pretty well in the tunnel as well - even w/o a signal, the moving map seems to match precisely.

 

[GolanB]

I posted an update in another thread: AP disengaged while driving - Radar Failure (release 2019.8.3) after Tesla got back to me on this.