Software Update 2018.39 4a3910f (plus other v9.0 early access builds)

[DDotJ]

Is there any way to tell if maps have been downloaded if you aren't able to monitor wifi traffic?

Nope. IIRC the map updates I used to get would pop a dialog box with a confirmation message. But this time around, the only way to tell was that my car downloaded 5 GB overnight and did not get a software update prompt.

Edit: Yep, it used to say "Congratulations! Your navigation system is now using the latest maps". But not anymore.

 

[chillaban]

Speaking of cultural behaviour. How does it handle cars merging in today? Either it doesn't react at all or it simply doesn't slow down early enough. I always have to disable it when a car comes on in a merging situation.

Completely insensitive and rude from a cultural standpoint. After the other car crosses about one foot into your lane AP2 will immediately react and adjust... but the current version of AP doesn’t understand merging at all. It’ll happily drive beside or speed up with a merging car next to it, even as the merge lane obviously is going to end. Humans would either move over a lane, slow down and make a gap, or speed up....

We’ve been told that v9 seems smarter about this.

 

[chillaban]

I like the tomorrow in quotation marks. We're all basing our assumption that we're getting this release on Oct 1 based on one person who spoke to one service centre. In my experience, the SCs know nothing about releases...

Just being realistic . Even “fast” rollouts are split in waves over 2-3 days. And that’s assuming they don’t find some horrible bug that pauses the rollout.

Really, sometime in the next 2 week s is what I’m expecting.

 

[Jan Fiala]

That's the dream, I want to move to Europe now. My commute is riddled with people going 65 mph (104 km) across all 5 lanes of traffic like a slow moving barricade.

I guess this our "fall to the right" rule increases its difficulty with the number of lanes... We are even not allowed to overtake from the right. (unless in a city)

 

[Alketi]

I hope they get the turn signal detection down soon, because more often than not I have to disengage to yield to a merging vehicle.

This. Of all the things being discussed for v9, I'd be most happy if the car could just anticipate merges as a human would, i.e. turn signal detection and/or notice that a car is starting to enter your lane. In v8 the car is effectively blind to merging traffic until that traffic fully enters your lane resulting in a hard last-minute braking event or a necessary disengagement.

 

[BerTX]

Why is the car not going back to the right lane after overtaking slower traffic? At the end you get the same result as if you positioned the car to the most left lane from the start.

There will be a lots of tickets at least in Europe for this stupid behavior, as we are usually not allowed in the other lanes than the right one when not overtaking (unless in a city).

The car was designed and built in the state of California, which has slightly different laws on lane occupation than the Real World. They drive in the (more) left lane if going the prevailing speed of traffic, BY LAW. Only slower drivers occupy the right lane. This is primarily due to their having vastly different speed limits (20% lower) for trucks than for other vehicles. If one tries to "stay to the right except to pass", it would be even more frustrating and dangerous than it already is.

I actually wonder if this is why the automatic lane change was removed. Their programmers are from California and didn't realize their way of driving is the anomaly. Now they have to go rewrite the algorithms and geofence them. That will take a lot of time, so they just took unattended lane change out.

 

[chillaban]

I guess this our "fall to the right" rule increases its difficulty with the number of lanes... We are even not allowed to overtake from the right. (unless in a city)

Yeah that’s awesome but almost nonexistent in the US. Most states here have a highly nuanced “keep right except to pass” or “slower traffic use right lane” law but there’s enough exceptions that you can still find left lane hogs. Plus even when that’s not legal, it’s not well enforced.

 

[DDotJ]

This. Of all the things being discussed for v9, I'd be most happy if the car could just anticipate merges as a human would, i.e. turn signal detection and/or notice that a car is starting to enter your lane. In v8 the car is effectively blind to merging traffic until that traffic fully enters your lane resulting in a hard last-minute braking event or a necessary disengagement.

I do know that Tesla was working on it, but Andrej Karpathy did say that it was a difficult problem to solve because of the high variability of turn signal designs across cars and the lack of training data of cars with turn signals on.

Interesting talk, but the blinker identification parts is at 24:23

 

[chillaban]

The car was designed and built in the state of California, which has slightly different laws on lane occupation than the Real World. They drive in the (more) left lane if going the prevailing speed of traffic, BY LAW. Only slower drivers occupy the right lane. This is primarily due to their having vastly different speed limits (20% lower) for trucks than for other vehicles. If one tries to "stay to the right except to pass", it would be even more frustrating and dangerous than it already is.

I actually wonder if this is why the automatic lane change was removed. Their programmers are from California and didn't realize their way of driving is the anomaly. Now they have to go rewrite the algorithms and geofence them. That will take a lot of time, so they just took unattended lane change out.

Another two things worth noting about California:
(1) most of our highways don’t meet interstate standards for merge lane length. So it’s almost a normal occurrence for people to be dumped onto the highway at 20mph and short of buying a faster car there’s not much the other driver can do! On such highways driving in the far right lane is pretty dangerous and certainly uncomfortable.
(2) on other major highways, I-5 being a good example, the right lane is almost exclusively a truck lane. And it develops gigantic potholes as a result — sometimes multiple per mile. In these cases realistically I can move over proactively to let crazy fast cars through (it’s not unusual to see people going 20-30mph above the speed limit in the left lane) but it’s also not realistic to actually drive in the right lane.

 

[BerTX]

Yes, it can tell if there is a car in your blindspot currently with ultrasonic sensors. But it can not tell if a car is approaching rapidly from behind. Or if another car is trying to change into the same lane (until there is an impending collision)

This is AP1. Unless the car is already in your blind spot, it won't see it. It doesn't see very far back and only cars directly next to it. I have an AP1 car and I even find the ultrasonic detection to be a little unreliable, which is why you have to check your mirrors prior to a lane change even when you use automatic lane change.

This is AP2/2.5. With this hardware suite, the car can 'see' much further, and even see whats coming up behind you. It uses computer vision, and not just ultrasonic sensors. The important ones here are the Readward Looking Side Cameras and the Rear View Camera. Also the ultrasonics can see further too with 5 meters vs 8 meters.

That's how we know AP1 won't get ULC, since the hardware is not capable of it. If you're going 65 trying to change lanes and a car is coming up from behind at 85 mph, the car is not capable of detecting that until it's already next to you and by then it's way too late.

I suspect blind spot detection is a part of the reason AP1 cars won't get this capability, but not the only reason.

If it were only blind spot detection, they could give us the same car-suggested, driver approval system that is currently being implemented for AP2+ cars. I suspect there is also forward-looking hardware and/or lack of computing power or access involved, so the actual lane change suggestion is not possible.

 

[DDotJ]

I suspect blind spot detection is a part of the reason AP1 cars won't get this capability, but not the only reason.

If it were only blind spot detection, they could give us the same car-suggested, driver approval system that is currently being implemented for AP2+ cars. I suspect there is also forward-looking hardware and/or lack of computing power or access involved, so the actual lane change suggestion is not possible.

I think so too.
Interestingly enough my AP1 Model S never got the maps update. I strongly suspect it has to do with computing power as well, and probably with the advanced navigational computation it also has to do.

 

[appleguru]

Is there any way to tell if maps have been downloaded if you aren't able to monitor wifi traffic?

From what I've seen, not really for this one (at least from the front end UI side). Sometimes you get a popup that your maps have been updated... but I definitely didn't see that this time. Just plug in + wifi whenever possible. Mine took nearly 12 hours on wifi to actually finish downloading and stage fully.

 

[Sandrosia]

That’s not realistic/possible. 10-20 feet is really the limit of ultrasound blind spot detection. AP1 literally cannot see something 50-60 feet behind it.

I think so too.
Interestingly enough my AP1 Model S never got the maps update. I strongly suspect it has to do with computing power as well, and probably with the advanced navigational computation it also has to do.

maybe WiFi issue? I have router basically next to the car, I get all updates within few days of release, I was one one the first to get map updates and I’m on AP1

 

[DDotJ]

maybe WiFi issue? I have router basically next to the car, I get all updates within few days of release, I was one one the first to get map updates and I’m on AP1

Interesting, mine is next to the router as well but I never got it. Oh well i guess I'm unlucky.

But I'm selling it anyways so I don't really mind

 

[iTech]

From what I've seen, not really for this one (at least from the front end UI side). Sometimes you get a popup that your maps have been updated... but I definitely didn't see that this time. Just plug in + wifi whenever possible. Mine took nearly 12 hours on wifi to actually finish downloading and stage fully.

You could contact Tesla TS and they can tell you if your car is downloading the maps and if so, what the progress is.

Or...bust out DX diag and get crackin'.

 

[emmz0r]

From what I've seen, not really for this one (at least from the front end UI side). Sometimes you get a popup that your maps have been updated... but I definitely didn't see that this time. Just plug in + wifi whenever possible. Mine took nearly 12 hours on wifi to actually finish downloading and stage fully.

Do you need wifi when you have LTE? And it should update if you have enough battery? Has anyone figured out the definitive rules for this?

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

The car was designed and built in the state of California, which has slightly different laws on lane occupation than the Real World. They drive in the (more) left lane if going the prevailing speed of traffic, BY LAW. Only slower drivers occupy the right lane. This is primarily due to their having vastly different speed limits (20% lower) for trucks than for other vehicles. If one tries to "stay to the right except to pass", it would be even more frustrating and dangerous than it already is.

I actually wonder if this is why the automatic lane change was removed. Their programmers are from California and didn't realize their way of driving is the anomaly. Now they have to go rewrite the algorithms and geofence them. That will take a lot of time, so they just took unattended lane change out.

Is it really any different though?

In WA state the rule is the left most lane is the passing lane. It doesn't change if it's a 2 lane road or a 3 lane road. I vastly prefer 3 lanes as I can get in the middle lane to pass trucks/RV's/etc, and the crazy people can pass me in the passing lane. There is usually too much traffic in the right lane to merge into it unless I'm going to exit. For all the reasons you mentioned it's not a good lane to typically be in.

I haven't heard of V9 having any sense of lane etiquette. From the videos it seems to pass on the left, and passes on the right. It's very much a North American type "lets just drive anywhere" thing from what I've gathered.

To really pull off lane etiquette does require a lot of geofencing and localization. Obviously when I drive on different roads I have to tune my behaviors to what's done there.

Sometimes you have to be in the left lane because the left lane is what exits. Other times you have to be in the left lane because the right lane has a tiny merge point coming up. So being in that lane would be really annoying to people trying to merge with so little room. Hell I get people angry with me for doing 70 (in a 60) for being in left lane right before that merge point. They don't realize what it's like for people trying to get onto the freeway there.

 

[Sandrosia]

Interesting, mine is next to the router as well but I never got it. Oh well i guess I'm unlucky.

But I'm selling it anyways so I don't really mind

This! Lol

 

[appleguru]

Do you need wifi when you have LTE? And it should update if you have enough battery? Has anyone figured out the definitive rules for this?

You 100% need WiFi for the maps update.

 

[chillaban]

So far every update I’ve gotten has been faster on LTE. Park the car for multiple days on LTE, no update, tether to my phone, immediately downloads around 1GB and then soon after I get an update notification.