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.”

 

[boonedocks]

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.

 

[EVSteve]

Yeaaa no thanks. Without the confirm there are going to be a lot of Tesla’s cutting people off and using on/off ramps to pass. I’ll be back on just regular autopilot when that update rolls out.

 

[Glamisduner]

Yeaaa no thanks. Without the confirm there are going to be a lot of Tesla’s cutting people off and using on/off ramps to pass. I’ll be back on just regular autopilot when that update rolls out.

maybe it will be a toggle-able option.

 

[Soda Popinski]

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.

 

[Derek Kessler]

gets to the right lane way way too early.

This is my biggest complaint with NOA, to be honest. It seems to think I need to be in the right lane two miles out!

 

[TT97]

I'll be happy if NOA just changes lanes - about a third of the time it just cancels and goes back to the original lane even though there is no car nearby.

 

[croman]

Dropping nags would be far more welcome. I don't trust NoA and honestly it still sucks way too much to deal with. It is a toggled feature and I'd definitely never let the car do unconfirmed anything until it greatly improves.

 

[Birdman325]

Maybe it could be rolled out as a “negative option” type of choice. Currently, you have to confirm the NoA action otherwise it won’t do it.
What if they changed it that unless you pull the stalk NOT not to make the lane change, it will do it.

 

[MentalNomad]

This is my biggest complaint with NOA, to be honest. It seems to think I need to be in the right lane two miles out!

Interesting, that's not my experience. But I have it set to change lanes aggressively ("Mad Max" mode.) I'll play with the settings to see if it affects how conservative it is about getting into the exit lane.

 

[Kant.Ing]

Yeaaa no thanks. Without the confirm there are going to be a lot of Tesla’s cutting people off and using on/off ramps to pass. I’ll be back on just regular autopilot when that update rolls out.

I knew it! It will change lane without a confirmation from the driver, but the driver can cancel the lane change by reversing the stalk before it completes the lane change. Haha, a similar way to keep the driver busy.

 

[IanAber]

Unless there is some option to retain the confirm or at the very least reject the lane change this will be a complete disaster and extremely dangerous to boot. Driving north from Tampa last night I found that my Model S was completely ignoring the right hand lane and in fact it was trying to put me into the HOV / Express lane when I only had one occupant and do NOT want to use this lane when there is no other traffic on the road.
Many times it tried to change to 'a faster lane' that was at best not different and often actually slower. I for one, will not be comfortable using this feature until the autopilot gets a hell of a lot better. It is still very much a student level driver and requires an enormouse amount of oversight.

 

[atonaltheory]

Be very careful with NOA. It can get confused and if you are not paying attention you will pay the price. IMHO it is not ready for many merge scenarios, exit scenarios, let alone lane changes without confirmation. Speaking from experience.

 

[TT97]

Unless there is some option to retain the confirm or at the very least reject the lane change this will be a complete disaster and extremely dangerous to boot.

From Elon's quote in the article:

"... It’s really quite sublime if you have stalk confirm off ..."

Sounds like there will be an option to turn on/off.

 

[IanAber]

We should all take what Elon say with a massive pinch of salt. He told us that autopilot was going to be silky smooth in the next release 18 months ago but I am still waiting for that one. The last couple of round of updates have made it even worse. The car drives like a teenager is taking it out for the first time. My wife hates it when I use autopilot because the car keeps correcting is lane position jerking her from side to side and often veers off all over the place when lanes merge or you pass an exit lane with no dashed line to delineate it.

 

[Electric Denny]

I find it way too conservative on changing lanes. It needs to grab an open space in the open lane and move to it quickly. Now, even in Mad Max mode, it takes way too long to execute the lane change which means traffic from behind closes the open space by the time NOA has started to move over, then it stops, basically stranding you behind slow pokes.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

From the Teslarati article.

"In a few weeks, we’ll be pushing an update that will allow the option of removing stalk confirm (for Navigate on Autopilot) in markets where regulators will approve it, which would be the case in the US, for example."

Elon Musk shares insights on Tesla's Full Self-Driving and Advanced Summon development

What regulator in their right mind would approve it unless its been drastically improved from what it is today.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I find it way too conservative on changing lanes. It needs to grab an open space in the open lane and move to it quickly. Now, even in Mad Max mode, it takes way too long to execute the lane change which means traffic from behind closes the open space by the time NOA has started to move over, then it stops, basically stranding you behind slow pokes.

One of the biggest problems with NoA is the user confusion that mad max means it will make more aggressive lane changes.

When it doesn't actually do that at all. It simply has a lower speed differential threshold on when it will prompt you to change lanes.

It really should be both more aggressive in trying to get around slower traffic, and more aggressive in actually making them. I hate how auto-lane changes requires at least a second or two of indicating before moving over even when there isn't anyone around at all.

 

[Derek Kessler]

I hate how auto-lane changes requires at least a second or two of indicating before moving over even when there isn't anyone around at all.

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.

 

[pdq]

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.

boonedocks: the brutal reality is that you are going to have to live with what you describe, as 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.