The biggest surprise I have after two weeks of Model 3

[KenC]

I'm glad the Model 3 is mitigating your lack of attention errors. Your pre-Tesla driving behavior scares me. I would hope it scared you, but you hit at least 5 cars, so, I guess not.

I suppose we should be happy when everyone drives a Tesla, to reduce the amount of crazy, inattentive driving going on.

 

[Kevy Baby]

Great post!

Now I'm just patiently waiting for the FSD to be fully implemented before forking over $7k...

When it fully works, it will be more than $7K

 

[WilliamG]

Neither of those features work worth a damn on our Model 3. I wouldn't spend the money on FSD if I had to do over.

Work just about perfectly for me.

 

[tvad]

Work just about perfectly for me.

Lucky you!

 

[dmurphy]

Lucky you!

Same here - works great for me too. Couldn’t imagine Autopilot without it. What doesn’t work on yours? Maybe a camera is misaligned or something?

 

[jordanair45]

Agree 100%

I also like the fact that I can charge (sometimes for free at volta) and get a full charge, a cup of coffee, AND breakfast, for way less than 5 gallons of gas.

 

[Tummy]

Did your G not have adaptive cruise? It’s very similar to Tesla’s TACC. I had the first gen on our FX45 since 2003.

 

[Huskyfan]

My daily commute is 40 miles round trip and in the past five years I had been driving a Infiniti G37x over 50k miles. I'm a bit impatient on the highway and most time I'm over 80mph on the left lane. Not surprisingly I got one speeding ticket every year or two and frankly I deserve it. Even worse, I'm also easily distracted when driving on local roads so my G37 rear-ended people five times. Three with no scratches so all were good, but the other two were $5k and $7.5k each. The last one ($7.5k) happened month ago and the insurance company decided to total the car.

Of course I had been eyeing at Tesla for quite a while and the last accident helped me to pull the trigger. I placed an order for a basic SR+ right the next day. The top reason I decided to buy M3 is that joy of instant torque and fast acceleration - I knew I'd love to drive it fast (but not too fast given my driving habits). The second is the anti collision feature that hopefully will stop me from eventually rear-ending half of the cars around the city. Autopilot? I heard enough bad stories on internet I didn't give it a serious thought.

Now two weeks later after driving the SR+ over 700 miles, it's amazing to see how the car completely changed me. Totally unexpected, my driving mentality/personality flipped 180 degree after getting used to autopilot. I become perfectly happy to stay behind other cars, letting autopilot do as much driving as possible and keeping the distance. I even have no problem to "crawl" under 60mph on the right lane because, heck, I'm not the one with foot on pedal driving the car so I just don't care. Traffic jam changes from hell to nothing, b/c I can totally relax with autopilot on as long as I don't have to rush. I do keep my left hand on steering wheel and my eyes on road, but still like many people said, it's so much less taxing with autopilot. To me it's like 70% less tiring on everyday commute.

In the end, I realized that I didn't just buy a car made by Tesla, I actually got a chauffeur from Tesla too doing 70% of my driving. Or, it's like I'm riding the free Uber everyday. More importantly, I believe that autopilot helped me to become a so much safer driver to everyone else on the road and to myself. It's just fantastic!

Of course, I still enjoy tremendously to sprint the car time to time, but for my daily commute M3's autopilot is godsend and the biggest surprise to me in terms of owning a Tesla.

Now I'm just patiently waiting for the FSD to be fully implemented before forking over $7k...

Maybe you should reconsider driving. Seriously. I was rear ended by a driver. Not hurt but my 4 week old BMW i3 was in the shop for almost two months. Driving a loaner car for two months is injury enough, not to mention the inconvenience of dealing with insurance companies, dealerships, body shops etc

your attitude is self centered in the extreme. Five rear end collisions and you blame the car; “so my G37 rear-ended people five times”. No you rear ended five cars.

You should not be allowed to drive. Period.

 

[Yang_H]

Maybe you should reconsider driving. Seriously. I was rear ended by a driver. Not hurt but my 4 week old BMW i3 was in the shop for almost two months. Driving a loaner car for two months is injury enough, not to mention the inconvenience of dealing with insurance companies, dealerships, body shops etc

your attitude is self centered in the extreme. Five rear end collisions and you blame the car; “so my G37 rear-ended people five times”. No you rear ended five cars.

You should not be allowed to drive. Period.

First, I want to say that I'm really sorry to hear your accident and hope you the best. Second, I would like to apologize that my writing makes you feel that I was blaming the car for the accidents. Of course it's all my fault, not cars. I wrote it in a way to dramatize the whole thing a little bit but this might be irritating to people like you. Again, my apology.

I just want to add that of five accidents, three happened at speed very low around 5-10mph, and none of the cars suffered any visible damage. One of the accident resulted serious damage and it was totally my fault, as I was watching the crossing traffic and forgot to pay attention to the car in front of me. Terrible mistake. The last accident was due to three deer jumped suddenly across the car in front of me in the middle of light. It's still my fault that I followed front car too close and moved my eyes away from road just at the wrong moment.

I'm actually not against the idea that if a person has developed a track record of similar accidents, he or she may be required to drive a car with proper driver assistance, provided such technology become widely available and affordable. Right now, as I said the model 3 with no doubt made me a much safer driver.

 

[DanCar]

Not so sure. Wouldn't be surprised if cost is north of $10K when FSD comes around. If you are spending a lot of time on the freeway, then auto lane change and navigate on autopilot, might be worth it. In 4 months, might have some benefits for city driving also.

Neither of those features work worth a damn on our Model 3. I wouldn't spend the money on FSD if I had to do over.

Tells us more. What are your traffic conditions? Why doesn't auto lane change work for you? You don't find the car nudging you on to the correct off ramp helpful?

 

[Yang_H]

Did your G not have adaptive cruise? It’s very similar to Tesla’s TACC. I had the first gen on our FX45 since 2003.

I believe that the G37 didn't have adaptive cruise control, at least I didn't remember seeing that in the manual or anybody else mentioning it.

 

[tvad]

Tells us more. What are your traffic conditions? Why doesn't auto lane change work for you? You don't find the car nudging you on to the correct off ramp helpful?

Southern California freeway - heavy to moderate traffic.

Aborted lane changes, abrupt/phantom braking, left lane passing and then slowing rather than continuing acceleration to designated cruise speed, missed exits...

 

[Phlier]

Do yourself a favor - do not, not, NOT test drive a vehicle with FSD. Once you drive with auto lane changing, you’ll see just how great Autopilot can be. If you think it’s good now .......

Completely agree.

When I first bought my car in August of last year, I remember thinking, "Wow, they have a long way to go to get to FSD. Even lane changing is iffy at this point."

Today marks exactly five months since I drove it off the lot. And if the AP isn't five times better than it was, it's close to it. The car makes lane changes very close to how I do them now.

My largest complaint has always been the phantom braking, and they're making very good progress on it.

 

[Occar]

Please post your travel itinerary here so we know where not to be in our vehicles (or on the sidewalk, or...).

You should be in a taxi/uber/whatever and not driving yourself. You've shown you can't handle it and are a danger to everyone around you (and worse, so nonchalant about it).

 

[rdskill]

By the time FSD really works and it's been accepted in all the states, 10 years will have gone by. Tesla will be on hardware version 5.0 by then. All EV cars will have it and it won't cost any extra in order to stay competitive. And everyone's automatic wipers will work.... except on Tesla cars.

When I had EAP that damn thing would NOT see a car in the next lane coming at 15-20 fast than my speed and start to move over right in front of it. I made a 6,100 trip and my most relaxing time was when I finally turned off NoA and stayed with Auto Steer making my own relaxing lane changes knowing I wasn't going to cut anyone off and the car wasn't going to abort 3/4 of the way thru the lane change.

I love commuting the 40 mile roundtrip in my model 3. I use autosteer everywhere. Its so much better than when I bought the car 9 months ago.

They just need to allow us to set the speed on cruise control rather then using mapped speeds. I hate going from 70 to 35 for a few seconds because I am in one of the right lanes on I-95.

 

[Sophias_dad]

my G37 rear-ended people five times

As another has suggested, it was YOU who drove your poor G37 into the back of five innocent victims cars, probably because you were too busy screwing with your phone, radio, laptop, facetime, whatever...

When you are behind the wheel of an automobile there are three priorities...

DRIVE THE CAR SAFELY
Navigate to where you are going
Enjoy the scenery

Note that not a single one of those entails looking inside the car aside from perhaps an occasional glance at the GPS or the speedometer.

I'd bet that if your three love-taps were at all more significant, you would be walking or taking the bus.. as it seems you should be anyway.


Sorry if this seems to be harsh, or is a surprise to you. Sometimes reality sucks.

 

[ttdanimal]

Everyone who drives a model 3 calms.

Because when you know you're the baddest mofo on the road... no need to get excited by other's feebleness... no need to show it off all the time.

Because you KNOW. What they apparently don't.

 

[Brother T]

Never seen a thread where the OP got bashed so much! Lol!

 

[StellarRat]

Let's see...I've been driving for 45 years now, long before there was any auto braking system and I've never rear ended anyone, but I've been rear ended twice. Once I was stopped at a light and once at a stop sign. Fortunately, I escaped with minor injuries. Both times cost me many hours of my personal time to deal with and loss of my car for repairs even though they weren't my fault. Maybe you don't think this is a big deal, but IMO you shouldn't be driving anything and need to take public transportation. You could kill someone. What if next non-attention "incident" is a child in the road? 10 mph could still kill them. As far as I'm concerned you're a public menace. Five times is ridiculous. Your Tesla isn't going to save you or someone else everytime.

 

[Type 5]

If you want FSD, I'd get it as soon as possible. As time goes on and as features are added and capabilities increase the value of it increases and so does the cost. So far, I see lots of legislative hurdles that may not allow for a fully functioning system to be ok'd for autonomous operation. However, it is such a great driving aid, if used properly, that I would still want it.
It provides another set of eyes, welcome help.