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The thing I thought I’d like the most about my Model 3 is the thing I like the least

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I know I’m going to catch some flak for this thread whatever I do, so I will try to head off at least some of it by saying up front that I still love my Model 3 overall, think it’s better than other EVs available at the same price point for a variety of reasons, and I have no intention of swapping it for something else. I’m sure I’ll get a flood of “well if you hate it so much why don’t you sell it!!” replies despite having said this 😆

But today I was ‘hypermiling’ down the motorway, sat behind a lorry that was doing a steady 56mph. I don’t normally try to squeeze out every last drop of efficiency like that, but my home charger is broken at the moment and rapid charging costs are ruinous, so needs must! As I did this, I became more and more annoyed that the car would frequently back off a few mph, let some distance build up to the lorry, then surge back up to my set speed (60mph), close right up to the lorry, then back off again, over and over. I find the adaptive cruise control in the Model 3 frequently does this. It doesn’t match the speed of the vehicle in front, it sort of matches the speed of the vehicle in front within a 5mph or so range, backing off and closing up again frequently. It is annoying.

I then thought back to my previous two cars that had adaptive cruise control, which were both VWs. In those cars, the speed always matched exactly to the vehicle in front. No backing off and surging forward, it was extremely precise. Why is the VW system so much better? Presumably because it uses a radar to detect the distance rather than relying on cameras.

It then occurred to me that when I bought the Tesla, I’d believed the hype about its ‘self-driving’ aids, believed it was the leader in this technology, and it was the thing I was most interested in trying out. However, I now think that in the real world, Tesla’s implementation of this is much worse than VW’s, and presumably other traditional manufacturers too. I tried the Enhanced Autopilot as well, but got my money back as, Autopark aside, it was hopeless. The thing I thought I would like most about the Model 3 is the thing I like the least.

Now, that’s ok overall. I’ve discovered over my time owning the car that there are many many things I love about this car, and overall those things make up for the crappy driver aid implementation. But I thought it worth posting my opinion in case belief that Tesla’s driver aids are more advanced than others is a reason anyone here is considering buying a Model 3. If you think that’s the car’s USP, and it is really important to you, then you will be disappointed. You’ll find loads of other amazing things about the car that you love, but you will be disappointed in the self-driving tech on UK roads in 2022.

I also know that data scientists are going to set me on fire for this thread, because I don’t understand the awesome potential of vision based systems, and that the AI models will learn and improve over time. That’s fine, but I bought a car in 2022 to work as a car in 2022. I didn’t buy the car for the joy of being part of a research project, or in the hope that in 5-10 years time it will surpass the abilities of cars that rely on radar. If you’re happy to accept lousy driver aid performance to be at the vanguard of a machine learning revolution then fine, but I just want features on my car to work now, like they did on my VWs.

But again, to repeat one last time - I prefer my Model 3 to my previous cars overall, and have no desire to get rid of it.

0x0-Model3_20.jpg

(Featured Image Courtesy of Tesla, Inc)
 
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Oh come on. There was a giant invisible mushroom propagating ricin spores in that shadow under a motorway bridge???
Who said anything about motorway bridges ? I was giving a list as requested of how a drivers actions could create what people call 'Phantom Breaking'.

There used to be an issue with bridges, I had it once in 2019 I think on the M25, but it's not been a thing for a long time.

It does astound me how everytime we have this discussion on this board there are people like me who use AutoPilot regularly and have next to no issues, and others that claim it's completely unusable and dangerous. I'm interested to understand why there is a difference, but I observe that generally those who claim a bad experience are not very interested in understanding what's different and would rather have an argument.

Interesting correlation.
 
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Who said anything about motorway bridges ? I was giving a list as requested of how a drivers actions could create what people call 'Phantom Breaking'.

There used to be an issue with bridges, I had it once in 2019 I think on the M25, but it's not been a thing for a long time.

It does astound me how everytime we have this discussion on this board there are people like me who use AutoPilot regularly and have next to no issues, and others that claim it's completely unusable and dangerous. I'm interested to understand why there is a difference, but I observe that generally those who claim a bad experience are not very interested in understanding what's different and would rather have an argument.

Interesting correlation.
You don't even get phantom braking when changing lanes with lorries around? That is strange, because it happens predictably every time. If I'm in lane 3 overtaking someone, move back into lane 2 and there's a lorry in lane 1, it will almost always brake hard part way through the lane change. I try not to change lanes into a lorry's blind spot anyway, but sometimes it's unavoidable if lane 1 is full of lorries in convoy.

You can even see why the Autopilot does it by looking at the FSD visualisation... part way through the lane change it'll go from showing the lorry in lane 1 correctly, to suddenly drifting the lorry into lane 2 and turning it red. Clearly the vision system has a problem figuring out which lane large vehicles are in.
 
You don't even get phantom braking when changing lanes with lorries around? That is strange, because it happens predictably every time. If I'm in lane 3 overtaking someone, move back into lane 2 and there's a lorry in lane 1, it will almost always brake hard part way through the lane change. I try not to change lanes into a lorry's blind spot anyway, but sometimes it's unavoidable if lane 1 is full of lorries in convoy.

You can even see why the Autopilot does it by looking at the FSD visualisation... part way through the lane change it'll go from showing the lorry in lane 1 correctly, to suddenly drifting the lorry into lane 2 and turning it red. Clearly the vision system has a problem figuring out which lane large vehicles are in.
Maybe once, a while back. I never give the inside lane any thought when moving from 3 to 2.
 
Maybe once, a while back. I never give the inside lane any thought when moving from 3 to 2.
That is strange... as I say, it is so predictable with mine that it would happen in that scenario that I think I could deliberately trigger it now. I wonder how two cars could be different with the same software. Do you keep your cameras really clean at all times? Maybe my cameras are dirtier or something like that? I do find that it happens even more often in rainy conditions.
 
That is strange... as I say, it is so predictable with mine that it would happen in that scenario that I think I could deliberately trigger it now.
Me too. Every single time. And it’s not just when you’re moving into a lorry’s blind spot, which is obviously bad practice.
Add to that mix that @GRiLLA hasn’t had bridge fright braking since 2019, I’ve had it badly twice in the last month on empty motorways, makes you wonder if @GeorgeSymonds musing about the systems not being consistent between vehicles isn’t right after all.
 
That is strange... as I say, it is so predictable with mine that it would happen in that scenario that I think I could deliberately trigger it now. I wonder how two cars could be different with the same software. Do you keep your cameras really clean at all times? Maybe my cameras are dirtier or something like that? I do find that it happens even more often in rainy conditions.
It's pretty filthy at the moment, seems little point washing it when it's going for trade in soon. Normally wash it every 2 weeks.

Maybe my new Model 3 will autopilot differently to this one, it'll be interesting to see.

I am conscious that there is another variable which is the roads actually being driven on. I'm daily on the M40 between J5 and J4 with less frequent trips up the M25, M6 or M1 typically. I'm sure there are plenty of motorways I rarely drive on. Perhaps some motorways have narrower lanes, or road colors that are seen less well.
 
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Me too. Every single time. And it’s not just when you’re moving into a lorry’s blind spot, which is obviously bad practice.
Add to that mix that @GRiLLA hasn’t had bridge fright braking since 2019, I’ve had it badly twice in the last month on empty motorways, makes you wonder if @GeorgeSymonds musing about the systems not being consistent between vehicles isn’t right after all.
Had the lorry thing happen again in the Model Y but was frequent in the 3 too.
I'm daily on the M40 between J5 and J4 with less frequent trips up the M25, M6 or M1 typically. I'm sure there are plenty of motorways I rarely drive on. Perhaps some motorways have narrower lanes, or road colors that are seen less well.
The bridge incidences for me have been rare more common is the truck on a corner thing, I expect the different motorways probably play the biggest part in the different results.

Apart from that the only logically explanation is if your car isn't having the problem of phantom braking, then you should get it checked by Tesla to get an authentic Tesla experience!
 
I’m generally ok with it on motorways on flowing traffic. Seems to hold distance fine. But in stop start traffic it does seem to react slowly - then accelerate hard - then brake hard. Don’t know if any of the modes like mad max etc affect that?

I do wish it would keep AP on when indicating to change lanes too
 
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1. too much speed
2. too short follow distance
3. using it on inappropriate roads with parked cars, pedestrians, cyclists etc.
4. there was a perfectly good reason to brake, just the driver didn't see it
If you’re using NOA then you can dismiss the first two because the car should determine the speed and the follow distance without input from the driver.

Most people are talking about phantom braking on motorways so point 3 can be dismissed.

Point 4, really?? I’m struggling to think of a good reason to brake that I driver wouldn’t see. You are entering the realms of the seriously improbable in your attempts to deflect criticism away from Tesla.

Do you not think there is the tiniest possibility that the software might be at fault?
 
That is strange... as I say, it is so predictable with mine that it would happen in that scenario that I think I could deliberately trigger it now. I wonder how two cars could be different with the same software.
The bit between the steering wheel and the seat is different in every car ;)

But seriously, there are so many variables even if the software is the same e.g. firmware version/hardware version of each component, road type , weather conditions, amount of traffic, etc.
 
It does astound me how everytime we have this discussion on this board there are people like me who use AutoPilot regularly and have next to no issues, and others that claim it's completely unusable and dangerous. I'm interested to understand why there is a difference, but I observe that generally those who claim a bad experience are not very interested in understanding what's different and would rather have an argument.

Interesting correlation.
That’s rather judgemental. Are people who “claim” to have a bad experience making it up? The car slamming on the brakes for no reason is a figment of their clearly overactive imagination? Good grief, these are, I’ve no doubt, intelligent people and experienced drivers who know what they’re experiencing.

What I observe is that Tesla fanboys are willing to blame anything and everything except Tesla.

Interesting correlation.
 
I'm not ALLOWED to use any form of autopilot - Mrs too scared after many PBs, some of which were quite hard.
Lane changing is very iffy: the change into the overtaking lane is usually OK but more of a "lunge" than I like, but returning to the original lane 50% 0f the time the car gets halfway across the dividing line and suddenly swerves back into the overtaking lane - very scary.
Auto parking is effectively useless unless you are testing it in an out-of-the-way car park with no-one around and even then it occasionally just stops halfway through and sits there indefinitely for no reason.
I speak as I find!
 
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^
These accounts bare virtually no resemblance to how we are using and finding AP in our 2017 X.

We did 200 miles of M1/M40 this weekend, AP handled 90% of M-way driving, 90%+ of lane changes, and to be 100% honest I recon if the EU regulations allowed the car to change lanes without human confirmation it I would have been 'happy' to be 100% hand off. I've no experienced any aborted lane changes for about 3 months now, and equally cannot remember the last episode of PB, though they do still occur more commonly than lane change aborts.
 
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Point 4, really?? I’m struggling to think of a good reason to brake that I driver wouldn’t see. You are entering the realms of the seriously improbable in your attempts to deflect criticism away from Tesla.

Do you not think there is the tiniest possibility that the software might be at fault?
Yes, and worth underlining that with phantom braking we're talking heavy/emergency stop style braking too. While there are often reasons to slow down on motorways (and I guess it's conceivable that the Tesla could spot something the human driver hasn't, but I too am skeptical of even this), there are very few scenarios in which slamming on the brakes is the safest response. Certainly none that wouldn't be apparent to the human driver also!
 
I'm with Pete224 ..

I think Tesla has the best battery and motor software control of any EV. The other features range from excellent (Audio and the app) to poor (wipers) to terrible (Cruise Control/autopilot). My old Cupra had excellent adaptive cruise.

I'm finding the build quality better than I was expecting (it's a 2021 china car).

Also the range in warmer weather is way way better than cold weather (I'd say summer/winter but I live in Aberdeen), I knew there would be a difference but I wasn't expecting it to be so marked.

The only real major disappointment I have is I don't have the ability to make it sound like a TIE fighter.
 
That’s rather judgemental. Are people who “claim” to have a bad experience making it up? The car slamming on the brakes for no reason is a figment of their clearly overactive imagination? Good grief, these are, I’ve no doubt, intelligent people and experienced drivers who know what they’re experiencing.

What I observe is that Tesla fanboys are willing to blame anything and everything except Tesla.

Interesting correlation.
No, but aren't you even slightly interested in what makes their experience different from other people?