Self /Auto Park sucks!!!

[Max*]

I wonder if these events will always be the drivers responsibility when we move towards FSD being activated. If FSD is turned on to self park your car in a private garage in a few years without you in it and the car hits the pole or clips another car's bumper I wonder how that will play out insurance-wise.

I think some of the big name manufacturers have stated that if their autonomous cars get into an accident, they'll cover the costs. I would think that involved parking.

But I agree, I'm also curious what the long term vision is for insurance companies.

 

[BerTX]

Umn... yes, again, that's what insurance is for.

I could take my car and accidentally drive it into a brick wall because I wasn't paying attention, and my insurance should pay for it.

This is no different. The car is not autonomous. The driver did not turn over the job, he's still responsible. Self parking has been around for years.

Haha, yes. If they refused to pay when the driver screws up, then what exactly would it cover? Oh, I guess when a tree falls on the car.

 

[Canuck]

I was a fanboy myself, but after this experience I'm more afraid of the Tesla Cult members than anything.

I understand your concern and frustration, and I would be upset too after this happened, but you're directing your anger at the wrong place. "Tesla Cult members" -- if there is such a thing -- had absolutely nothing to do with your accident. Be more afraid of death, or something else real, than them.

These things happen in life. No one said life was fair. File an insurance claim and get it fixed. Provide your insurance company with copies of your correspondence to/from Tesla and press them to subrogate against Tesla. They handle subrogated claims and they retain legal counsel who are experts in the field to commence legal actions, so they can tell you your chance of success.

 

[specterS]

Appreciate your feedback Canuck.

I think you're right. This isn't the place to vent about an issue- rarely ever do. I just felt so let down by this experience I guess I let it get in the way of reason and proper channeling.

 

[3s-a-charm]

Used the Self / Auto park yesterday. I pulled up next to a car and put the car in reverse. I selected the auto park button and let the car parallel park. The car proceeded to back up into the space. It then pulled forward to straighten out but came too close to the curb and the front right rim rubbed ... luckily i hit the brakes and stopped the car. i now have about 4 inches of curb rash on my rim. Thanks Tesla!!!

This happened to me too - about 1.5 years ago. Tesla was very good about it. One thing I learned is to ensure your car is at a FULL STOP prior to hitting the start/park button... if your vehicle is rolling at all (which it can when you are hitting the start button) it will alter the programmed trajectory. Since ensuring this, the system has been flawless for me.

 

[specterS]

This happened to me too - about 1.5 years ago. Tesla was very good about it. One thing I learned is to ensure your car is at a FULL STOP prior to hitting the start/park button... if your vehicle is rolling at all (which it can when you are hitting the start button) it will alter the programmed trajectory. Since ensuring this, the system has been flawless for me.

Thanks 3s-a-charm. I don't have the creep function turned on and the car did come to a complete stop. Good to know you were able to overcome your issue.

Can I ask how they resolved your case and any other tips?

 

[sorka]

While I feel for the OP, if I were his insurance agent my reaction would be: "You turned over the job of parking to a machine which,
in a written statement of limitations I have right here in front of me, explicitly requires you to retain full control and responsibility, and
then you allowed this machine -- while you were right there -- to run your car, at very low (but relentless) speed, into a pillar. And you
want us to pay for it?"

Auto park on AP 1 hardware has been flawless for me up to the time that I stopped using it. I no longer use auto park given all of the reports where Teslas have crashed into walls and other cars in cases where the system clearly should have been able to handle it.
Now if it's a tall thin post, or something overhanging high that the sensors can't see but still low enough to hit the top of the car or anything else that is just strange, I can see needing to make sure that you don't use auto park in those cases.

But the failure of auto park in seemingly typical and straight forward situations is simply unacceptable. When I did use, it was in situations where I knew it would do a better job than me because I couldn't judge distances in tight parking scenarios as well as the sensors did. If there's tons of room and it's an easy case, then what's the point of using it at all. The people that are going to use are the ones that don't a a good level of parking skill already, or it's going to be a tight fit and hard to judge without a 360 all around camera like my Infiniti has.

So when are you supposed to take control? What are you supposed to monitor? Auto park turns the wheel for you. The instructions say to keep your hands off. What is the thing you're supposed to do to use auto parking correctly? Make sure you hit the break before the car hits something? Auto park passes within just inches of car bumpers, curbs, pillars, and walls. It's designed to do this. How are you supposed to know that it's about to hit something when the other 12 times you used it and it did the same thing but did so with just enough clearance? The answer is you can't know which really means you can't "trust" it which is why I don't use it any more.

At this point, I would gladly trade auto parking for the 360 top down camera view that I had in my infiniti. It allowed me to park in ridiculously tight spots while maintaining complete control myself.

 

[sorka]

This happened to me too - about 1.5 years ago. Tesla was very good about it.

Very good about what? Did they repair the damage for you so you didn't have to go through insurance or pay out of pocket?

 

[PaulR]

One thing I learned is to ensure your car is at a FULL STOP prior to hitting the start/park button... if your vehicle is rolling at all (which it can when you are hitting the start button) it will alter the programmed trajectory. Since ensuring this, the system has been flawless for me.

+1 Yes, you must come to a complete stop.

 

[specterS]

So when are you supposed to take control? What are you supposed to monitor? Auto park turns the wheel for you. The instructions say to keep your hands off. What is the thing you're supposed to do to use auto parking correctly? Make sure you hit the break before the car hits something? Auto park passes within just inches of car bumpers, curbs, pillars, and walls. It's designed to do this. How are you supposed to know that it's about to hit something when the other 12 times you used it and it did the same thing but did so with just enough clearance? The answer is you can't know which really means you can't "trust" it which is why I don't use it any more.

Sorka, this is EXACTLY how I feel.

I can assure you the pillar/column was not something unremarkable. 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet and around 15-20 feet tall, concrete with bright yellow markers.

Luckily I didn't hit a person or another car and the damage didn't affect the charge port.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Sorka, this is EXACTLY how I feel.

I can assure you the pillar/column was not something unremarkable. 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet and around 15-20 feet tall, concrete with bright yellow markers.

Luckily I didn't hit a person or another car and the damage didn't affect the charge port.

In your original post I think you underestimated how many moderate Tesla fans there are on TMC. Where we've learned about what works, and what doesn't work.

In my entire history of car ownership the Tesla was really the first car where it wasn't just a good idea to research everything about the car, but it was almost a requirement. Where a site such as this is an invaluable tool in learning about the car.

The crux of it is the both summons, and autopark rely on ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors have issues detecting various things depending on angle, and height, etc.

In this particular case I have no idea how the sensor missed it, but it did.

I don't use auto-park for various reasons, but the biggest knock against it that I have is it forces you to be in the car. Can't I get out and watch to protect things?

When I use summons I'm always watching. Well not just watching, but I have to stand in an exact spot to get it to pull in directly in my garage.

When the time comes that I sell my car I'm going to be clear to a buyer that blindspot monitoring, summons, and autopark do NOT work and not to trust them at all. They simply do not work in an AP1 car to a level of 99.9% perfection let alone greater which is likely required to really say something works.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

Curious Q, if the feature (self park) is unreliable to the extent that it frequently damages your car, it is safe to say that the feature is not usable.

So when you buy the car, and the manufacturer says it has feature X - but you simply cannot use it because X risks damaging your car big time, is it as good as the manufacturer reneging on their promise to provide a usable feature X?

In the same vein, a lot was promised to AP1 users, such as car will summon on private property (not just in a straight line) etc. that never was delivered. Shouldn't Tesla offer some sort of refund for functionality that was never delivered?

(I really don't think AP1 owners will see any more features .. at least nothing of significance)

 

[green1]

Has anyone compared Tesla's self park to any of the other cars with similar functionality? I've never heard of any of them hitting things while doing the self parallel park thing, (and several cars have had that feature for some time) but I don't frequent the forums for those other manufacturers either.

 

[green1]

So when you buy the car, and the manufacturer says it has feature X - but you simply cannot use it because X risks damaging your car big time, is it as good as the manufacturer reneging on their promise to provide a usable feature X?

This one gets rather difficult to decide on. Features on various vehicles work "better" or "worse" than others, and all of them come with so many disclaimers that it's never the fault of the manufacturer.

I've mostly focused on things Tesla promised but simply didn't deliver, those are easy to prove. But there are certainly arguments to be made that "unusably bad" features are just as much of an issue, things like the "blind spot monitoring" that I've actually given Tesla a pass on, this is something they did actually deliver, even though it's absolutely horrible.

Maybe it's just a matter of perspective, when there are so many things they outright lied on, those tend to get focused on before you get as far as complaining about things that were technically delivered, even if not in a useful way.

 

[RogerHScott]

the biggest knock against [auto park] that I have is it forces you to be in the car

This is particularly ironic in light of the fact that summon has the opposite problem: unless you play games with the car to fool it it forces
you to be out of the car, even when you'd rather stay in.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

AP1 has mostly been delivered on (with a few exceptions of course, like taking exits automatically, summon on private property etc.).

I though have huge doubts on the promises of AP2. I really think they are super over promising there, and people are set up for butt hurt a few years from now.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

My wife and I just bought our ModelS 75D and we are/were diehard fans of Tesla. We used Autopark once and it seemed to work fine despite the car moving in and out of the spot multiple times to get it right (no assistance needed by the driver).

However, 3 weeks ago Autopark slammed the car into a concrete column in our parking garage. Absolutely no time to even react to stop it and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. We (Tesla owners) know machines, programs don't have user comfort in mind when it comes to cars coming dangerously close to you while Autopilot is active or the car coming close to obstacles you 'think' are about to hit, but the readings show it won't and everything is fine- it's marvelous engineering and science work. I'm sure it has predicted accidents beforehand and helped prevent them as many videos show, but all it takes is ONE collision and who knows how much in repair costs for a driver to question, whether it's worth the risk.

Bye bye Autopark feature.

We contacted Tesla immediately. Took measurements, pictures, noted time of incident to the best of our knowledge. We don't have a dash cam, so all we had was the visible damage and the data collected by the car itself.

3 weeks later, Tesla gets back to us with 'Autopark worked as intended' and then pointed us to excerpts from their manual on how the driver has to always be ready to stop the car.

Here is their response:

"Reviewed the data from the time of incident, Autopark was working as expected. You may want to refer to the warnings listed in owner's manual: Warning: Many unforeseen circumstances can impair Autopark's ability to park Model S. Keep this in mind and remember that as a result, Autopark may not steer Model S appropriately. Pay attention when parking Model S and stay prepared to immediately take control. Warning: During the parking sequence, continually check your surroundings. Be prepared to apply the brakes to avoid vehicles, pedestrians, or objects.”"

Makes sense of course- until your car crashes into a column and all you can do is either suck it up and get it repaired and never use Autopark (a feature you pay for) until it's 100% functional or spend countless hours and money trying to find justice in other ways. We're afraid to find out repair costs. I guess since we can still drive it and charge it things aren't that bad right? Well do you want to drive around an $85k car with gash on the bumper and a busted tail light?

I am convinced that people are psycho about Tesla and will do everything they can to give them the benefit of the doubt and just plain assume that everything they do and make is sacred and flawless, while the driver is a complete idiot who basically didn't do it right.

I was a fanboy myself, but after this experience I'm more afraid of the Tesla Cult members than anything. It took a lot of courage to share this, but after the shoddy service and lame response I'm not sure about things with this car anymore and if people want to just blame me without knowing any facts then I'll know who to ignore.

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Thank you for having the courage to say it. Most people who post these thing up are afraid to call those fanboys out. I have my fair share of intimidations here on this forum. At the end of the day you have to understand these you will never convince these people otherwise with your comments or post. Only an incident that directly occur to them where tesla screw them can change their mind. Heck some don't even have the car and trying to defend something they have no experience with.

For me I say it as is. No sugar coating or defending entities just because you bought and product from them. If you don't like please share so others can make accessments on whether they want to jump in or not.

Like wk057 I'm sure he got a lot of flack dissing tesla from members here. He doesn't care. He just post more crap tesla is pulling. Guess what? With their new 100KWh pack they are now over rating them instead of under rating them like the 85kwh or 90Kwh pack.

Another example is the p90d launch limit. They removed that after people here called them out on it.

Point is if there is enough discontent, it only help push tesla to be a better company.

 

[3s-a-charm]

Thanks 3s-a-charm. I don't have the creep function turned on and the car did come to a complete stop. Good to know you were able to overcome your issue.

Can I ask how they resolved your case and any other tips?

My incident happened the first week autopark became available and I specifically didn't touch the wheel despite the car digging my 21" wheel into a curb (with a client in the car - kind of embarrassing!).

I told Tesla about the incident and asked them to review the logs to ensure I didn't do anything wrong and although the system "worked as intended" and I didn't intervene - Tesla covered the wheel repair but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a policy or admission of guilt - simply a good-will gesture. I was more cautious in future parking but the car performed flawlessly so I chaulked it up to a one-time incident. The repair was $145 I think... and I was calm and factual about it. It was a case of getting more with honey than with vinegar or whatever the saying is .

I do not use creep but did notice that sometimes when you pull up to park if you don't press the brake hard enough to engage the "hill-hold" feature (?) that the car can roll a little especially on a slight incline - that is when you do not want to hit that start button to begin parking. Always stop fully - then start Autopark.

 

[specterS]

. and I was calm and factual about it. It was a case of getting more with honey than with vinegar or whatever the saying is .

I totally agree this is the way to go for any issue. These are people with vision. People I assume are proud of where they work and by their demeanor and tone seem like they are treated well, so I give them the benefit always... even when you catch them over selling I think it's okay. When they can't deliver what they promised I feel like they try to make up for it. This happened to us when we purchased our ModelS.

I don't have a problem admitting when I'm wrong. No one is perfect and I don't argue just to feel like I'm right. I find times when I'm wrong about something as an opportunity- especially if I can walk away from it.

I sent Tesla an 11 page report with images and measurements. Here's an excerpt of an email exchange with their service center. I'm aware you'll have to trust that I'm not making this up.

"One last thing…just wanted to mention how impressed the tech was with the presentation of the info you provided.
Thank you so much.
Paul"

Anyways, let's see how this turns out. Thanks for all your posts.

 

[Max*]

Curious Q, if the feature (self park) is unreliable to the extent that it frequently damages your car, it is safe to say that the feature is not usable.

Don't you think this is a bit of hyperbole?

I don't use self-parking (it's slow), so I don't know how often it screws up. But we're seeing a handful of loud vocal complaints on TMC, and jumping to the conclusion that self-parking is unreliable across the board and FREQUENTLY damages your car? This is a car enthusiast forum, people come here to bitch and whine about their cars, not praise them. For every accident, there's probably 10,000 successful self-parking episodes.