Wife: "Why is it so jerky?"
Me: "Well, it can decelerate somewhat abruptly while on freeway interchanges..."
Wife: "It's not just around corners, it's all the time on the freeway; why do you use it if it is so bad?"
Me: "Well, I'm trying it out; I think maybe you notice less if you're driving"
Wife: "Well, I notice it. It's ok to try it out if you're the only one in the car, but it isn't cool to do it otherwise"
Me: ...
Wife: If you keep trying to use it, I'm going to stop riding in this car, and we're going to have to take my car*. It's not relaxing.
Me: <disengages Autopilot for remainder of trip>
<a couple minutes pass>
Wife: It's much smoother now. Did you turn it off?
Me: Yes, I did.
Wife: I'm much more relaxed now.
* My wife's car is a Chevrolet Spark EV. That tells you something.
You can't make this stuff up!
Here's hoping that Tesla discovers low pass filters soon.
My wife and I just came back from a 2-month, 24,000km road trip (Canada and US). There were many, many instances where Autopilot and NOA almost got us into accidents, and my wife too asked why we were even using these if it was going to be so jerky and unpredictable. Here is where it was worse:
1) driving by an on ramp where cars are coming up the ramp: never knew when it would (again) slam on the brakes instead of allowing a smooth merge. This almost caused a crash by a motorcyclist who was following us, never expecting a sudden stop
(
2) off ramps where there were no dotted lines at the ramp continuing the normal roadway markings. Never knew if it was going to drive smoothly on the normal path or swerve right then left to stay in the middle of the “lane”
3) off ramps to the left. Wow, that was scary as three times while in the fast lane the car veered very abruptly left then right and then hit the brakes
(( Don’t know why we were never rear-ended but imagine a lot of very pissed off drivers thinking we were brake-checking them
(((
4) NOA only indicated the need to pass a slower vehicle and then to go back into the right lane maybe 30% of the time, the rest I had to do myself
5) NOA approaching the off ramp: the car would not consistently take the ramp, and even where it did it was so last minute that we were sure it would not do it. Very unpredictable.
HOWEVER: on those long stretches of boring, boring highway, Autopilot and NOA were soooo nice to have and really helped get to our destination more rested. Too bad these nice stretches were often interrupted by hair-raising moments. My wife, like yours, much prefers that we not use Autopilot and NOA....