So SilkySmooth never happened now waithing on SomethingSpecial

[_jal_]

Forget the AP stuff, let's just look at TACC. On my Audi, it's TACC equivalent has been 100% flawless in the 13 months I've owned it.

I don't want to brag or be seen as an elitist, but I own an exotic car with stars on it ... it's called a Subaru. It has TACC that is also flawless. And lane maintenance assist that has been flawless. And I can have plain old cruise instead of TACC if I push a "button." It's a shame that my tesla has its functionality set in stone such that I cannot disable the beta TACC functionality and just have basic cruise, but that would take dozens of lines of code.

 

[_jal_]

What a perfect thread for me to vent my AP2.0 issues as of late. This coming from a Tesla self-professed fanboy and investor, I don't usually speak negatively of anything Tesla, but latest AP has impressed me and scared me since Silky Smooth.

First the good:

Overall on LA freeways and recent trip to Vegas (mostly long straightaways) it really does well as long as I'm in a well marked lane with no false lines (sometimes there are striations in the middle of the freeway lanes that AP2.0 mistakes for the edge of the lane).

In stop and go traffic it's been pretty decent, including city streets.

One last good review before the bad- I've recently done two trips up a windy single lane road to Mt Baldy and wow did it perform amazingly well, even on some really tight bends.

Now the bad-

Twice in the past two weeks I was cruising on the freeway in a well marked lane doing about 75mph, nobody around me, when suddenly for no good reason that I could ascertain, the AP2.0 did a violent hardover to the left. It was so bad that had I not had my hand on the wheel I'm pretty sure in one case I would have hit the center barricade, and the other I would have been in the other lane in an instant. Wow they made me frustrated!

Lately I've done a lot of driving on the 105 (the freeway that goes right past the Tesla design studio and SpaceX, so no doubt Tesla management and Elon have driven this stretch numerous times on AP) and had the worst experience while in the carpool (HOV) lane. Anytime the lane markings widen for the carpool entry/exit, the car aggressively seeks the center of the new wider lane, and sometimes overcorrects, essentially making a wild ride of hard left and right corrections. I've had so many manual disconnects I don't bother using AP in the carpool lane on the 105 now.

And this morning I was driving on the 60 East of LA, and there are those striations I alluded to earlier, and i could tell by looking at the IC lane representation that the AP thought the striations were lane edges, so the car wanted to sit on the far left edge of the lane. I must of kicked off AP with torque override maybe 25 times and left a frustrated voice "note". Ugh!!


Ok, sorry for the long venting post but seemed apropos when I came across this thread. And I agree with the OP, getting tired of this nonsense.

This was on another thread, but I did catch my car changing lanes due to a tar line. Wth?
Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?

 

[tezzla]

I have no idea why everyone whines so much, I just got back from a 4400 mile road trip, I used the AP2 every single mile (well, for 2 hours at a time; it stops working after that).

It might have hit the brakes 3-4 times on the trip, not a big deal. Even with my legs crossed, I just hit the go pedal within 1/2 a second and never slowed down more than a couple of mph.

It's not perfect, but remember; perfect is the enemy of good.

 

[bob_p]

Last weekend we drove about 300 miles one way on interstate - and for most of the drive AP2 worked great.

But, there are several sections of the route that had construction - and AP2 quickly got confused when entering the construction area with both permanent and temporary lane markings. And rather than issuing a warning or disengaging, the software unsuccessfully guessed which lane markers to use and would either try to run us into a traffic barrier or into the middle of the adjacent lane.

The easy part is getting the software to stay in the middle of a well-marked, limited access, divided highway lane - and for that AP2 works very well.

It's the special cases which will be the challenge for EAP & FSD - the same things that are challenging for all new drivers, learning how to react - at highway speeds - to confusing road conditions.

And, at least with the pre-.32 software, AP2 needs to be monitored carefully when in non-ideal road conditions. Which is OK, as long as drivers are well informed of the software's limitations.

Unfortunately, Tesla's policy of not providing any release notes on most of their software updates doesn't provide drivers any indication of what has changed in the recent release, or the areas where there are known issues.

Tesla is using nVidia's processors - they could take a page from nVidia's playbook. Their graphics driver releases provide considerable documentation on what has changed in each release - and the known problems that have not yet been addressed.

Why can't we get something like that for the car's software? Especially since driving a car is considerably more hazardous than using a graphics card for computer gaming...

 

[buttershrimp]

So we all waited anxiously for Elon's "SilkySmooth" firmware update in a couple of days no more than next week. That was months ago and never happened. According to the last Q update Elon said the version of EAP he is using is "SomethingSpecial " Well we deserve a bit of that SomethingSpecial.

I have often scoffed at those that posted "My car almost killed me"..."My car slammed on the brakes"...yadda yadda yadda.

Carry forward to this morning: My wife routinely takes our S100D to a very early class were she leaves the house at 5:00am for a ~65 mile roundtrip and returns home in time for me to take it and drop the kids off at school and start my daily commute of ~95 miles. She take the Tesla ONLY because I encourage her to for its safety 1st and economy 2nd. She has stated many times that she refuses to use EAP because it is, in her words, a little scary the way it drives. She does use TACC regularly and usually likes the way it seems to behave. On her commute she travels almost 20 miles each way on GA 400. The last week there have been several bad accidents on this stretch including fatalities. The Forsyth Sheriff's department publicly said that they would be heavily enforcing this stretch of roads because of the increased accidents and as you can guess everyone is hyperaware of paying attention and driving safely.

This morning when approaching a bridge overpass traveling at 65mph the car very quickly decelerated to 45mph, throwing everything in the passenger seat into the floorboard BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY causing everyone behind her to start braking hard and almost caused a major accident. My wife would not have been part of it but our car would have been the cause of it. She was visibly shaken when she arrived home thinking of what she, our car, almost caused to happen. After us just having a discussion of how sad it was for a family to have lost their husband / father just 5 days ago in almost the same place.

My point in this post is to offer a bit of acknowledgement to those that have had similar experiences and say "I hear'ya" AND to ask publicly WHERE IS OUR SS. Either SilkySmooth from months ago or our SomethingSpecial mentioned over 2 weeks ago. As much as I HATE to say it, Tesla either needs to turn off TACC and EAP until they have something safer or put out an update to make it an order of magnitude safer. I pay great attention to my car and the road when using EAP and TACC and my wife is a really good driver and uses TACC only and as an added safety feature. I told her I keep my foot on the go pedal ready to push it when it does that and her response back was WTF kind of safety feature is that!!! I can't argue that response. We are becoming more and more disenchanted with the software portions of the safety features of our HW2 S100D and she is now said she won't use TACC any more either.

We have sent an expedited message through the "my Tesla" portal but if it is like others we have sent and said verbally to the folks at our Service Center.....I won't hold my breath.

The first rule of fight club.... never encourage your wife to use AP before she's damn well ready....

Trust me... I'm still in the doghouse for what happened after 17.17.17

 

[Tesmotorfaqcom]

I think we all know AP is not FSD, but in the end AP should not make driving more dangerous it's driver assist not assist suicide. While AP 2.0 I know is far from perfect, last week when it failed to recognize the divider on a highway with slight curve against the sun under the overpass, I have to manually take control within a second to avoid the crush as the car going 80 mph is quite frightening. I asked Tesla to pulled the log and still waiting for a response, I think I heard some alarm went off right when I took the wheel but honestly can't remember.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I don't want to brag or be seen as an elitist, but I own an exotic car with stars on it ... it's called a Subaru. It has TACC that is also flawless. And lane maintenance assist that has been flawless. And I can have plain old cruise instead of TACC if I push a "button." It's a shame that my tesla has its functionality set in stone such that I cannot disable the beta TACC functionality and just have basic cruise, but that would take dozens of lines of code.

I don't think any of this stuff is flawless.

With AP1 I've had cases where it suddenly deacclerated. In both TACC, and AP.

Subaru has also had issues with false positives as it was actually pretty prone to slowing down for shadows. It is after all a camera only system. I haven't driven it enough to test it, and my mom flat out won't use ACC. I have driven it enough to know that occasionally it spits out false FCW's. But, the Tesla AP1 does as well.

My biggest frustration with Tesla is they don't allow us to have fine-grain control over anything. I don't want the car to stop for stationary objects. I only want basic TACC and FCW. I don't want it to slow down because there is a car in the shoulder. I don't want it to try to be too smart.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

From the post it seems like she was on TACC only? Is this correct?

Some might say that it's the same thing as TACC only. But, I don't believe so. I think AP is more than TACC plus lane-steering.

As an example months ago Tesla introduced a "feature" that would quickly reduce the speed of the car if there was a car coming up in the shoulder. This was only enabled for when it was in AP

They pulled the feature (or reworked it) after a massive number of complaints.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I have no idea why everyone whines so much, I just got back from a 4400 mile road trip, I used the AP2 every single mile (well, for 2 hours at a time; it stops working after that).

It might have hit the brakes 3-4 times on the trip, not a big deal. Even with my legs crossed, I just hit the go pedal within 1/2 a second and never slowed down more than a couple of mph.

It's not perfect, but remember; perfect is the enemy of good.

This is what happens with my AP1 car. It really only annoys me when it happens right after I pass someone.

But, I don't know if it's what's happening with these AP2 cases.

 

[EV-lutioin]

AP1 is not perfect either and if you look through the threads you will see plenty of "Autopilot tried to kill me" posts referring to AP1. I trust the observations of those who have extensive experience with both AP1 and AP2 to give an earnest appraisal of the differences. Stay vigilant out there folks.

 

[ohmman]

I don't think any of this stuff is flawless.

With AP1 I've had cases where it suddenly deacclerated. In both TACC, and AP.

Likewise. I've had it happen while towing (TACC only) and it's incredibly disconcerting. There is definitely a learning curve as to when and where it's appropriate to use the tool. Being clear, I have AP1 as in the quoted text above. The most recent event was a truck exiting off of the highway and visibly out of the lane (even according to the AP display), but my X and trailer braked to 44 mph in a 70 before I finally gave up on it and took over. That wasn't before I really pissed off some fellow drivers, and I'm not a fan of having my new tech endanger others.

We're operating in the early space of this technology, I get that. But perhaps there should be a more intense warning about the requirement for vigilance on this "beta" product.

 

[Dreamontom99]

What a perfect thread for me to vent my AP2.0 issues as of late. This coming from a Tesla self-professed fanboy and investor, I don't usually speak negatively of anything Tesla, but latest AP has impressed me and scared me since Silky Smooth.

First the good:

Overall on LA freeways and recent trip to Vegas (mostly long straightaways) it really does well as long as I'm in a well marked lane with no false lines (sometimes there are striations in the middle of the freeway lanes that AP2.0 mistakes for the edge of the lane).

In stop and go traffic it's been pretty decent, including city streets.

One last good review before the bad- I've recently done two trips up a windy single lane road to Mt Baldy and wow did it perform amazingly well, even on some really tight bends.

Now the bad-

Twice in the past two weeks I was cruising on the freeway in a well marked lane doing about 75mph, nobody around me, when suddenly for no good reason that I could ascertain, the AP2.0 did a violent hardover to the left. It was so bad that had I not had my hand on the wheel I'm pretty sure in one case I would have hit the center barricade, and the other I would have been in the other lane in an instant. Wow they made me frustrated!

Lately I've done a lot of driving on the 105 (the freeway that goes right past the Tesla design studio and SpaceX, so no doubt Tesla management and Elon have driven this stretch numerous times on AP) and had the worst experience while in the carpool (HOV) lane. Anytime the lane markings widen for the carpool entry/exit, the car aggressively seeks the center of the new wider lane, and sometimes overcorrects, essentially making a wild ride of hard left and right corrections. I've had so many manual disconnects I don't bother using AP in the carpool lane on the 105 now.

And this morning I was driving on the 60 East of LA, and there are those striations I alluded to earlier, and i could tell by looking at the IC lane representation that the AP thought the striations were lane edges, so the car wanted to sit on the far left edge of the lane. I must of kicked off AP with torque override maybe 25 times and left a frustrated voice "note". Ugh!!


Ok, sorry for the long venting post but seemed apropos when I came across this thread. And I agree with the OP, getting tired of this nonsense.

I too am in So Cal and have noticed the same problems in lanes, I've also noticed that when in a turn AP2 slows down drastically (not just normal curve slowing) as it sees the cars in the other lanes and seems to think they are on a collision course .

 

[outie]

Wait a sec. Why would I use EAP if I need to watch it like a hawk? I am vigilant when I'm driving myself but what's the point of a driver aid that needs you to be more vigilant?

So Tesla can tell the public how their customers have lower accident rates with AP engaged.

 

[malcolm]

The first rule of fight club.... never encourage your wife to use AP before she's damn well ready....

Trust me... I'm still in the doghouse for what happened after 17.17.17

Maybe SS stands for S**t Storm.

 

[agtdDelirium]

The biggest problem with EAP at this stage is that it is only using two of eight cameras for lane guidance. It's like a myopic old man driving with coke bottle glassed. It looks such a short distance from your vehicle, it can't manage any change in lane markings. The radar seems to get false positives all the time, thinking cars are in it's lane on curves and such. If the cameras (all of them) were just used to override these false positives, the drive would be so much smoother. Simple lane lines widening, or exits off roadways should not cause such drastic searching back and forth for a lane. A long range camera helping plot a smooth course to where the lane is more than 30 feet in front of the car would help so much. Right now, we are driving with such short range vision, it is remarkable there have not been more accidents. Why is it taking so long to simply use information from additional cameras? This is making me worry that the software engineering of so much data input is overwhelming. It really doesn't matter if you have AP1, AP2, or AP2.5. If we are only using 20 percent of the sensor input, the drive will be crap.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Sad as it is, but it is probably braking for decapitating truck trailers based on radar.

I don't know why @kort677 disagreed with this message.

To me it seems obvious what is causing the ghost brakings is the radar-based overhead detection and fleet learning algorithm introduced after the death of Joshua Brown (widely believed to have been decapitated when his AP1 car hit a truck trailer from the side). They also appear on AP1 these days, though less than on AP2.

There is no vision-based detection of overpasses on EAP yet as far as anyone can tell, I believe, so it is based on radar that does get false positives and is trying to filter those out through fleet learning. Fleet learning may also explain why these experiences can differ from place to place (e.g. perhaps Tesla-infested California once again differs from RoW).

If anyone has a better theory on the ghost brakings, I'm all ears.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

This was on another thread, but I did catch my car changing lanes due to a tar line. Wth?
Elon, Where is the FSD features you promised?

I had the same. This was on the update that came after the silky smooth tweets, but before the update (the hash one) that actually introduced the smooth steering algorithm (which I do think is smoother than before when it works).

Here's my tar line story:

"Had the first "it tried to ruin my car and maybe hurt someone" moment with the AP2 (17.26.76) today. Roadworks caused a freeway to turn and narrow a bit, with a solid white line on both sides of the lane, adjoined by another lane on the left (and beyond that a highway divider, behind which the opposing lanes) and by concrete blocks on the right. No problem with this for AP2, as the markings were clear and the weather was nice enough. Really, the road was clearly marked, the only problem was slightly narrower lanes and no room for error on the sides, so this was not the "road markings lead to a concrete divider" scenario at all.

Suddenly the road has a sort of diagonal, but partial (not fully across the lane) dark line going across the lane, covered in pitch/resin. Probably some remnant of old road markings or covering some cavity on the road or temporary changes made to the road during the work there. The actual roadmarkings on the side continue as usual in bright white, while this diagonal line twists/turns to one side, but again is dark and not a road marking by any standard. There are straight, solid, bright white lines marking the road on both sides of the lane. But this dark line does end under the left-side road marking, so it sort of starts extending from that.

It is sufficient for me to stiffen up expecting the worst - half thinking to myself I've spent too much time on TMC and am now dreading the unnecessary. Until now the only real problems with AP2 had been ghost brakes at overpasses (one bad, many unpleasant) and terrible undivided road performance. It had been pretty good on divided roads (which I was on), as far as following lane markings in good weather go...

But sure enough, AP2 starts turning alongside this sort of diagonal line! Straight towards those concrete blocks lining the lane on the right side! I mean - it stopped following beautiful, solid while lines on both sides of the lane and chose to start following a dark, partial twist in the middle of the lane into concrete obstacles. An absolutely insane decision from the EAP that just shows how limited its ability at the moment is... even if those road markings had not made sense, there was a huge wall of concrete right next to the lane it wanted to turn into, instead of that beautiful free air straight ahead.

It took a very strong twist of the already turning steering wheel on my part to cancel this movement. Everyone else in the car was stratled, though personally I was ready and was reacting, so it was more like adrenaline kicking in on my part.

Later on on the trip it got very confused again when overtaking and wanted to start following a car on the adjacent lane. At that point I just turned it off and drove the rest of the way. It stays off for now.

Other than that, staying within lane was slightly less ping-pongy for me. The overall feel is more aggressive than previous versions, I would not call it silky smooth."

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Tesla is using nVidia's processors - they could take a page from nVidia's playbook. Their graphics driver releases provide considerable documentation on what has changed in each release - and the known problems that have not yet been addressed.

Hear, hear.

A more transparent Tesla would certainly be welcomed. Such detailed change logs could be provided e.g. on MyTesla or some Service page on tesla.com, so they wouldn't have to bog down the car's system.

 

[OilSucks]

I love my Model S with AP2 but I must say, the only time I fully trust it is on roads that are straight, well marked, and without low over passes. Also throw in semis. I'd say 85% of the time it has been incredible, but I have about 15% of my experiences with AP2 that have filled me with grief, sadness, and absolute white knuckle terror.

 

[Tjhappel]

Does anyone else feel like AP starts working worse right before an update comes out?? There is a new update that is rolling out and I would swear last 3 days my AP isn't working like it did two weeks ago. Mind you I drive same routes every single day, 200++ miles a day and the same lanes etc.. I will just barely use carpool lanes anymore with eap engaged on, let's hope as mentioned above they actually use 2-4 more cameras as that would totally help with widening carpool lanes that currently slam you from one side to the next.

I feel like we are doing turtle pace here....