Blog Tesla to Remove Stalk-Confirm for Navigate on Autopilot

“In a few weeks,” Tesla will remove the requirement for drivers to confirm lane changes when its cars are operating in Navigate on Autopilot mode, Chief Executive Elon Musk said Wednesday during the company’s Q4 earnings call.

Navigate on Autopilot is an active guidance feature for Enhanced Autopilot that, with driver supervision, guides a car from a highway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting and making lane changes, navigating highway interchanges, and taking exits. “It’s designed to make finding and following the most efficient path to your destination even easier on the highway when Autopilot is in use,” Tesla says on its website.

The system currently requires drivers to confirm lane changes using the turn stalk before the car moves into an adjacent lane. The update would allow customers in markets where regulators will approve it to waive the confirmation requirement if they choose to.

“And over time, probably all regulators will approve it,” Musk said on the call. “But we kept stalk confirm there to make sure that we took care of any strange corner cases. It’s really quite sublime if you have stalk confirm off and the car goes from highway on-ramp, passed the slower cars, takes the interchanges and then takes the exit and then comes to a stop after the exit. It’s really quite profound to have that experience.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year he believes the automaker’s current hardware for its Autopilot system is sufficient for achieving full autonomy. In the Q3 letter to shareholders, Tesla said Autopilot will soon experience a rapid rollout of additional functionality.

“Now that the foundation of the Tesla vision neural net is right, which was an exceptionally difficult problem, as it must fit into far less computing power than is typically used, we expect a rapid rollout of additional functionality over the next several months and are progressing rapidly towards our goal of a coast-to-coast drive with no one touching the controls.”

 

[Pale_Rider]

I won't be able to use automatic NOA as is until they fix several key issues I have ever single commute where NOA wants to leave the HOV lane and get back in one mile later. No matter traffic, time of day, speed, etc etc etc it incessantly prompts in two different places every commute. Meaning if left to its own demise it will get out of the HOV lane into slower lane changing traffic to just try and get back in at the next entry point Very annoying. I have sent numerous bug reports and emails and no change. Also two long entrance ramps where the speed limit is 70mph, my car wants to set NOA to 45mph which as you can guess is a definite road hazard.

I agree, the incorrect speed limits are going to get someone hurt one of these days. There are a few spots where I drive, albeit a newly redone road, where the limit is 65 and all the sudden the car thinks it’s 45 and slams on the breaks. Very annoying. As for the HOV, there is an option to not use HOV lanes, might help your situation there...

 

[boonedocks]

I agree, the incorrect speed limits are going to get someone hurt one of these days. There are a few spots where I drive, albeit a newly redone road, where the limit is 65 and all the sudden the car thinks it’s 45 and slams on the breaks. Very annoying. As for the HOV, there is an option to not use HOV lanes, might help your situation there...

But then it will never go to the HOV lane using NOA and I use that lane for 99% of the expressway portion of my commute.

 

[MentalNomad]

Tesla is never going to fix the long list of what they call "Known Problems". Instead, they spend their time developing new features that are of dubious value, along with silly Easter Eggs.

It's remarkable how many people foolishly think that Tesla development is one dude who has to halt development on AI to work on copying a game simulator for an Easter Egg.

Note to the clueless: the development teams working on things like the driving AI are largely separate from the teams doing UI and doing little things like Easter Eggs. The one simply does not impact the other.

The fact that they let a tiny group work on something you don't like - but which other people do like - doesn't have any bearing on the pace of development for the things you care about. No bearing at all. (Unless your complaint is about which Atari games they've chosen to port... in which case, bitch away.)

I'm glad they have solid teams tackling the tough problems. I'm also glad they have a couple of folks doing the fun, quirky things that put smiles on some people's faces and give others an entry point into conversations about Teslas and EVs.

 

[mitchellh3]

My hope is that the no-stalk introduction means that they also made significant improvements to NOA in general since the last release.

We haven't seen a 2019 build yet so presumably there is going to be quite a lot of change in the underlying firmware since we'll be seeing roughly ~10 to ~15 weeks of development get merged in (even the newest Model 3 firmwares 2018.50.x which implies to me that they're just backporting fixes onto an old release branch).

I definitely won't enable no-stalk right away, but regardless I'm hoping to see some major improvements.

 

[TT97]

That's literally the entire point of signaling: to indicate what you're about to do so nobody else is surprised. If you're in such a hurry that a second or two is so irritating you "hate" the wait, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.

That may be the point of signaling in the Mid-West; in L.A., it is a signal for the car behind in the new lane to speed up to block you out.

 

[CarlK]

That may be the point of signaling in the Mid-West; in L.A., it is a signal for the car behind in the new lane to speed up to block you out.

Agreed. People especially do not like those (timid) drivers who turn blinkers on long before they are ready to move. That's an indication they will go slow after they got in front of you not to mention it confuses people if you don't actually move. Turn the blinker on at the same time you find it safe and are ready to move.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

That may be the point of signaling in the Mid-West; in L.A., it is a signal for the car behind in the new lane to speed up to block you out.

Do you speed up when somebody uses their turn signal?

 

[TT97]

Do you speed up when somebody uses their turn signal?

I actually slow down to let the person in and almost got rear-ended for that once. I am definitely in a small minority here.

What's worse than when it is slow to change lanes is the numerous times you turn on the turn signal and then the car does nothing and turns off the signal a few seconds later. I have stopped using auto lane change so now I manually override to make the lane change, and then have to turn off TACC and turn it back on again as the car now thinks 18 mph is the best speed for TACC (or slightly higher if I am actually moving faster than 18 mph on the freeway). I know for some reason they intentionally did that but every time it happens I file a bug report.

 

[pvogel]

For this to be effective for me I need to be able to re-route the NAV, it always wants to take one exit too soon (both get to the destination, but the first one requires crossing three lanes of traffic in a short space to get to a left turn lane, the other exit leads to a few right turns and one left turn from a single lane (Each way) road to get to the same destination).

 

[PhaseWhite]

I actually slow down to let the person in and almost got rear-ended for that once. I am definitely in a small minority here.

What's worse than when it is slow to change lanes is the numerous times you turn on the turn signal and then the car does nothing and turns off the signal a few seconds later. I have stopped using auto lane change so now I manually override to make the lane change, and then have to turn off TACC and turn it back on again as the car now thinks 18 mph is the best speed for TACC (or slightly higher if I am actually moving faster than 18 mph on the freeway). I know for some reason they intentionally did that but every time it happens I file a bug report.

I think the thing people haven't come to grip with yet is that Autonomous Cars will not drive like humans. They will drive much more cautiously, and as long as most driver's are humans, the most difficult thing for them will be dealing with aggressive human drivers.

When I'm cruising on autopilot, my car is keeping a safe following distance, it does not tail gate, it is not speeding excessively, and it makes lane changes only when there's plenty of space. To contrast, the humans around me are all riding each other's bumper, driving 15 over the speed limit and zipping around cars going 10 over. That is not safe driving.

 

[emmz0r]

It's remarkable how many people foolishly think that Tesla development is one dude who has to halt development on AI to work on copying a game simulator for an Easter Egg.

Aside from the AI team, it certainly does feel like the whole MCU team is one person.

 

[boonedocks]

Do you speed up when somebody uses their turn signal?

I don’t but far too many people do which will cause problems.

 

[Chuckyvt]

For this to be effective for me I need to be able to re-route the NAV, it always wants to take one exit too soon (both get to the destination, but the first one requires crossing three lanes of traffic in a short space to get to a left turn lane, the other exit leads to a few right turns and one left turn from a single lane (Each way) road to get to the same destination).

Same exact situation for me on my morning commute. I type in an address close to the second exit that gets it off at that exit. Not ideal, but that address is always near the top of my recent list, so not too bad.

 

[dgatwood]

I would hope this would come along with improvements to Nav on AP. I've only really "seen the light" with Nav on AP once, when I was navigating to someplace I'd never been, and had about 4 freeway transitions. It was great, even with confirmations. That said, it's useless on my daily commute, as it's not aggressive enough in Los Angeles rush hour traffic, and/or gets to the right lane way way too early.

That's consistent with my experience as well. It is way too scared to change lanes, and as a result, it has to leave itself an insane amount of time to do so. So it tries to change out of the carpool lane 1.5 miles before the exit. In rush-hour traffic, that would add at least five minutes to the trip, if not ten.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

That's literally the entire point of signaling: to indicate what you're about to do so nobody else is surprised. If you're in such a hurry that a second or two is so irritating you "hate" the wait, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.

It depends on what your intention is with the turn signal.

Most times I use my turn signal like you describe where I'm indicating my intention so no one is surprised especially the guy two lanes over in case he wants to get into the middle lane that I'm going into. Usually that 1-2 seconds is spent double checking anyways.

There are times where use my turn signal to ask to move over. That works well in a place like the PNW that's filled with courteous drivers who let people in.

There are times where I use my turn signal to dictate that I'm going over, and I'm going over NOW. As an example If I'm passing someone on a 2-lane highway why would they need 2 seconds of indication? I'm in the passing lane going PAST them. Once I'm clear I'll indicate with the turn signal, and then get over.

This kind of thing is largely about tuning it for the nature of the owner. and the nature of the roads that he/she is on.

I can't drive in California with the same "Hey, would you entirely mind if I got over?" like I would in Washington state. I've noticed the further south I get from the Seattle are the more aggressive I need to be. With exceptions of course.

So far in my usage of NoA I've come to conclusion that it fails in a lot of key areas

Bad maps or bad interpretation of them.
Bad situational awareness. Like you complained that it would get over 2 miles too early, but there are exits near where I live where 2 miles wouldn't be enough due to insane traffic backups. There needs to be more adaption based on map traffic, and user preference.
Inability to adjust aggressiveness on lane changes. Not just the length of indication time, but also in how much room. Sometimes you have to be an a-hole.
The failure rate of auto-lane changes is way too high.

 

[SD39]

Tesla Navigate on Autopilot latest update - no confirmations required!

 

[Zeligprod]

Every time the car wants to change lanes, I have to touch the steering wheel or it will stay in the current lane with the blinkers on ... which is a different kind of authorization but one nonetheless, and it’s actually worst than the stalk authorization since you’re in your lane with the blinkers on until you realize that you have to authorize.

I’m on the latest 2019.12 version.

 

[Seattle Tom]

New NoA is quite good. I don’t think a night-and-day improvement, but they have improved the car’s decision making in many areas.

One thing I’ll note is that Tesla has very sneakily embedded a method to ensure drivers are keeping their hands on the wheel, as Zliegprod pointed out. The car will not change lanes automatically unless it senses some torque on the wheel. So the “nag” isn’t as often because every time the car changes lanes you have to put pressure on the steering wheel.

Very creative, Tesla.

 

[MentalNomad]

That's right; the car makes sure you have your hand on the wheel (like you've agreed to) before starting a lane change.