Some autopilot issues

[ZeeDoktor]

3 weeks since I got my 2020 Model S Performance and already 4500km on the clock, two drives Sydney Melbourne and some local driving did that. Very happy with the general stability of the autosteer, drove me to Melbourne and back from Sydney essentially on its own. However...

(note this post is in the Australia forum - for LH drive vehicles reverse the lanes in the following text...)

- Navigate on Autopilot does a lot of needless lane changes, so I generally drove without it. It moves into the passing lane for every freeway entry (or everything it thinks is a freeway entry). Minor annoyance large enough to make me disable it most of the way. But it does come in handy when approaching Sydney or Melbourne to get into the correct lanes early. That part works very well.
- With normal autopilot with autosteer driving, keeping it in the lane works rock solid in all lighting scenarios, day and night, driving bang on into the sunset, very impressive. Indicating right to get into the passing lane works every time. But getting back into the slow lane is really hit or miss - about 50/50 whether it will follow through or abort. I have no idea why that would be, the left hand lane has markings plainly visible, but for some reason they fade in and out in the visualisation in the dash, and autosteer abandons about half the attempts to get back into the slow lane. Has anyone else experienced this and found a reason/remedy?
- occasionally when passing slower traffic, the adaptive cruise control suddenly slows down. Is this what other people describe as phantom breaking? The dash never shows any obstacles or anything that might explain why it slows down. Oddly it passes swerving B-doubles at 20km/h or more delta v no problem giving me heartburn from it insisting on hugging the left line instead of the right...

 

[Didaho]

Hi Zee, What you're describing is the current incarnation of FSD, ie. NOA rather than autosteer - it's unhelpful if we don't use the same terminology.
First one - probably the safest method for the AI given the limits of the tech in estimating the trajectory of incoming traffic from a physically remote source. My usual problems with this aren't in my car.
Second issue may be related to the first? If it is it should get better over time.
Phantom breaking, at least as I've experienced, is very noticeable (active retardation) and is usually due to either giving left turning traffic the benefit of the doubt (that's unrequired) or things like bridges that the AI isn't able to interpret.
Point is, the system isn't yet ready to drive itself and needs to be lightly superintended & I quite like the remaining, engaging task of staying in front of the shortcomings and sorting it out.

 

[Furfy]

I also find a lot of the lane changes unnecessary when using NOA. I've been running it with 'speed based lane changes' turned off as this stops most of the unnecessary changes. It still picks the wrong lane (one lane to the right too far) for certain hwy exist (every time on the same exists). This is almost certainly due to lane mapping or just a software bug; either way, it will get resolved over time.

 

[ARMARM]

But getting back into the slow lane is really hit or miss - about 50/50 whether it will follow through or abort. I have no idea why that would be, the left hand lane has markings plainly visible, but for some reason they fade in and out in the visualisation in the dash, and autosteer abandons about half the attempts to get back into the slow lane. Has anyone else experienced this and found a reason/remedy?

I've seen this issue back in October last year, it doesn't happen when i'm going from home to the city and back, it's on "rural" parts of the highway. I know of other people who have this problem too, and as far as I know there is still no fix. I can't figure out whether it's a vision or mapping problem. Best thing to do is shoot an email off to Tesla.

 

[Shallowal]

But getting back into the slow lane is really hit or miss - about 50/50 whether it will follow through or abort. I have no idea why that would be, the left hand lane has markings plainly visible, but for some reason they fade in and out in the visualisation in the dash, and autosteer abandons about half the attempts to get back into the slow lane. Has anyone else experienced this and found a reason/remedy?
- occasionally when passing slower traffic, the adaptive cruise control suddenly slows down. Is this what other people describe as phantom breaking? The dash never shows any obstacles or anything that might explain why it slows down. Oddly it passes swerving B-doubles at 20km/h or more delta v no problem giving me heartburn from it insisting on hugging the left line instead of the right...

I notice it does the abort more frequently in anything less than ideal light, even though I cant see any difference in the road markings from one section to another. Yet moving to the right lanes is very reliable???.
This behaviour only came with one of the updates around christmas time and thought it might be a problem with a camera somewhere, so am pleased to see it happens in other vehicles.

Since the introduction of the passing speed "feature" I find that the car will sometimes slow down to match the speed of the vehicle I'm attempting to overtake but only ever in single vehicle situations, If there is a line of slow moving vehicles it charges on regardless. Seems to be the opposite of the intended function.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

Regarding terminology, I would suggest adhering to the components of the autopilot system:
- The classic traffic aware cruise control (TACC). Pull the cruise control stick once to engage.
- Autosteer (AS). Pull the cruise control stick twice to engage. Use indicators manually to initiate automatic lane change.
- Navigate on Autopilot (NoA) which eventually will evolve into FSD. Activated on the navigation screen, unless you have the option selected to "always navigate on autopilot".

TACC is extremely unreliable in my case. Taking speed limit information from a map database in a region where WAAS is not available to give precise enough location information and then allowing said speed limit information to be propagated into the TACC is simply dangerous. I've had the car suddenly slow down to 40 from 100 because it thought I was on an offramp. I had it slow to 60 in an 80 inside a tunnel because it thought I might be on the offramp inside the tunnel, and had it slow to 40 from 80 in a tunnel because it thought I was on top of the tunnel (and the nav system started rerouting based on that information).

AS is rock solid when left alone. Follows the highway for hours on end reliably. Using the indicator to switch into the passing lane works 100% of the time, even when merging into traffic. But merging left from the passing lane only has about a 50% chance of going through. No idea why that is.

NoA on occasion works beautifully, getting me into the right lanes early and efficiently, using the passing lane to bypass slower traffic. But by and large it insists on unnecessary lane changes when no traffic is in sight and it spends a lot of time indicating before moving, which in fast moving traffic is a problem (indecisive drivers as I call them when I see them).

Anyway, that's the state of things at the moment. TACC is the one subsystem really needing improvement. And my second request really is for being able to "soft" disengage AS by pushing the cruise control stalk once. Twice will disengage both AS and TACC (the reverse of how to engage TACC + AS). My wife is severely displeased with aborted lane changes into the slow lane (it scares her sh*tless to use her words) so when I drive her around, I now have to resort to disengaging both TACC+AS before making a lane change to the left as the only way to disengage AS only appears to be to override it with steering wheel action, which also results in a jerky lane change.

 

[Wol747]

>>My wife is severely displeased with aborted lane changes into the slow lane (it scares her sh*tless to use her words) <<

Snap!

Even when working “well”, the steering acts like a leaner driver, which is very disconcerting: it does not look ahead enough to make smooth lane following or changes. I would be failed on a test if I drove like this.

 

[Shock-On-T]

One of the best things about Tesla is watching things improve over time.
I found it best to wait until I was alone in the car when I wanted to stretch the AP and let it make mistakes.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

Mine only does the "learner driver" thing when using NoA. It indicates forever before actually making the lane change. If I saw my car from the outside, I'd think they don't really know what they're doing. So I'm not really using NoA at all because, frankly, I feel embarrassed to look to be driving like that. But when using TACC+AS, I always let it do the lane changes initiated by my indicator movements on its own. I find those to be quick and efficient.

 

[Wol747]

Another thing - the mapping is severely out of date. Around our place - we moved in 18 months ago, and the house was built at least 6 months before that - the roads are wrongly labelled and the site on the Google earth display is bush! And, in common with other GPS sets it can take you well out of your way to get somewhere. I've not found a way of customising the routeing.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

Yes, that's where it's a bit of a shame they don't have apple car play implemented which would allow google maps to route. The built-in nav makes up some bizarre routings on occasion. However, that has nothing to do with the autopilot...