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Thoughts on Autopilot after a week of ownership (UK)

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Roundabouts are honestly so much easier and less stressful than a busy intersection!
Yield to cars coming around the roundabout, join it, indicate into it if you're going around, indicate out when you're pulling off. Easy! I'm really intrigued to see how autopilot uses them. :D

The most annoying thing is when someone doesn't indicate out of the roundabout and you were waiting for them to pass before joining!

We have them here, but they tend to be pretty small so that there really isn't much time to signal an exit. Not sure what signalling into would accomplish. Is there any alternative to entering the circle (that's what we call them here)?

The image of Darth Vader recording voices in a GPS commercial saying "round-a-boot" sticks in my head just now. lol
 
We have them here, but they tend to be pretty small so that there really isn't much time to signal an exit. Not sure what signalling into would accomplish. Is there any alternative to entering the circle (that's what we call them here)?

The image of Darth Vader recording voices in a GPS commercial saying "round-a-boot" sticks in my head just now. lol


Signaling in usually just lets people know you're going around, if you don't signal people generally assume you're going straight across. In driving lessons, I was thought you're going past '12 on the clock' (more than just straight across) you should indicate in.

It stops you pulling out in front of them because you didn't know they where they were going. :p

Not that people use them correctly here anyway. :D
 
New Jersey used to have a lot of them 50 years ago. They were very efficient for light to moderate traffic but bogged down with heavy. The trick was to look out the side of your eyes and never turn your head because that was flinching and put you at a disadvantage. Once a month a drunk would plow straight into one late at night at high speed, leave most of the wheels at the circle curb and land in the center.
 
On the topic of roundabouts...

The way we're supposed to use them in the UK is actually a little buggy in the current Model 3 firmware!

If you try to go from indicating right straight to left, it just cancels the indicator. Elon, please fix! :)

Is that true if you go to the full on, self holding position? That would seem to be a bug.

A cancel is needed somehow. Many times I fat finger the durn dual stalks and have to cancel a turn indication. It is never clear if it looks like I am signalling first a turn one way and then a turn the other way. That's not really much worse than some of the abortive lane changes the car does if someone is a touch too close. I got pulled over by a cop once because the car was "hunting" the center of the lane.
 
Is that true if you go to the full on, self holding position? That would seem to be a bug.

A cancel is needed somehow. Many times I fat finger the durn dual stalks and have to cancel a turn indication. It is never clear if it looks like I am signalling first a turn one way and then a turn the other way. That's not really much worse than some of the abortive lane changes the car does if someone is a touch too close. I got pulled over by a cop once because the car was "hunting" the center of the lane.

It's likely a bug! I imagine it's like that so you don't accidentally indicate the other direction when cancelling the indicator manually, but they could just stop it doing the 3 blinks in the other direction at that's what is most easily done when cancelling the indicator. :)

I'll try to bug report it when I remember.
 
Really? 3-5 meters is only 10 to 16 feet! That's less than half a car length. Why would anyone feel the need to get closer to a stopped car than that?
It's not the stopping distance, it's the time the autopilot takes to start moving again once the car in front moves. People behind think you have fallen asleep and start beeping after 4 to 5 car lengths space between the moving vehicle in front and your stationary car.
 
It's not the stopping distance, it's the time the autopilot takes to start moving again once the car in front moves. People behind think you have fallen asleep and start beeping after 4 to 5 car lengths space between the moving vehicle in front and your stationary car.

Sounds like Boston. I recall being at stop lights and when they turned green I literally could not get my foot on the clutch and gas fast enough to keep people behind me from blowing their horns.

I've had a lot of people in the UK tell me EVs are not practical for most people in the UK because they can't charge at home without running cords across the sidewalk. I suggested it would not be overly expensive to install curb charging outlets and they insisted that was nearly impossible because of the roads that would be closed while doing the work, etc.... So I'm not going to make any suggestions about a place I don't know and don't understand.

But I do know EVs will be the dominate means of locomotion in 10 years... with or without the approval of the masses. In 10 years it will be the cheaper way to go.
 
I'm really intrigued to see how autopilot uses them.

I got my delivery on 21st Nov and had to drive to Shropshire on A-road full of roundabouts on 25th Nov. My car was still installed with v9 (I don’t understand why! I had to call the service centre for them to push the v10 to me directly to get upgrade, but since then I have had 2 more minor updates to v10). Since updated to v10 I have not tried A-road roundabouts yet.

The autopilot was awful at roundabouts. And these are big A-road roundabouts with road markings. It seems to barge in and never slow down or pay attention to incoming traffic. Luckily in the 3 occasions I let my car go into roundabouts on autopilot, we didn’t have to give way to traffic on the right (there was none or they were all going straight), but the car did not slow down to check at all.

And then it decided to go straight on at the round about, aiming for the central island (rather than going around), and then when it detected an obstruction, the autopilot immediately disengaged and I had to swerve or take control straight away. It was very bad when my car was approaching roundabout on the left (slow) lane as by going straight it was going into the path of the right lane! But luckily there was no traffic.

So yeah, I think only motorway straight driving for now for the autopilot and only when the road is quiet. Lane changes are pesky as with EU rules, the car has to indicate for a few seconds before changing lane but the whole manoeuvre has to complete within ?5seconds. Sometimes I noticed there was a gap and the car would have had to change lane now, but it didn’t, and when it wanted to change, the traffic had become much closer and so autopilot disengaged! *facepalm* I find it more tiring to use AP sometimes.
 
[QUOTE="LavanyaLea,

The autopilot was awful at roundabouts. And these are big A-road roundabouts with road markings. It seems to barge in and never slow down or pay attention to incoming traffic. Luckily in the 3 occasions I let my car go into roundabouts on autopilot, we didn’t have to give way to traffic on the right (there was none or they were all going straight), but the car did not slow down to check at all.

And then it decided to go straight on at the round about, aiming for the central island (rather than going around), and then when it detected an obstruction, the autopilot immediately disengaged and I had to swerve or take control straight away. It was very bad when my car was approaching roundabout on the left (slow) lane as by going straight it was going into the path of the right lane! But luckily there was no traffic.
.[/QUOTE]

Autopilot on roundabouts?
I'm not sure.
 
I got my delivery on 21st Nov and had to drive to Shropshire on A-road full of roundabouts on 25th Nov. My car was still installed with v9 (I don’t understand why! I had to call the service centre for them to push the v10 to me directly to get upgrade, but since then I have had 2 more minor updates to v10). Since updated to v10 I have not tried A-road roundabouts yet.

The autopilot was awful at roundabouts. And these are big A-road roundabouts with road markings. It seems to barge in and never slow down or pay attention to incoming traffic. Luckily in the 3 occasions I let my car go into roundabouts on autopilot, we didn’t have to give way to traffic on the right (there was none or they were all going straight), but the car did not slow down to check at all.

And then it decided to go straight on at the round about, aiming for the central island (rather than going around), and then when it detected an obstruction, the autopilot immediately disengaged and I had to swerve or take control straight away. It was very bad when my car was approaching roundabout on the left (slow) lane as by going straight it was going into the path of the right lane! But luckily there was no traffic.

So yeah, I think only motorway straight driving for now for the autopilot and only when the road is quiet. Lane changes are pesky as with EU rules, the car has to indicate for a few seconds before changing lane but the whole manoeuvre has to complete within ?5seconds. Sometimes I noticed there was a gap and the car would have had to change lane now, but it didn’t, and when it wanted to change, the traffic had become much closer and so autopilot disengaged! *facepalm* I find it more tiring to use AP sometimes.

I feel like autopilot will be unable to do roundabouts until it has some form of navigation outside of motorways; Otherwise it's just trying to follow lane lines to go straight which doesn't really work on roundabouts!

Same goes for when it gets confused when one lane splits into 2, with navigation the car could decide which lane to use.

You're totally right about it barreling into roundabouts and corners in general though! It doesn't slow down until it's started taking corners and realises it can't make them. :(
 
AP is not yet configured to deal with junctions and roundabouts, although I know they are testing the code for city driving which I believe will deal with junctions and roundabouts. I have a few videos on my channel where my MS navigates roundabouts quite well but they are flukes rather than a feature.

Just been testing 40.2.1 and the results are interesting

 
AP is not yet configured to deal with junctions and roundabouts, although I know they are testing the code for city driving which I believe will deal with junctions and roundabouts. I have a few videos on my channel where my MS navigates roundabouts quite well but they are flukes rather than a feature.

Just been testing 40.2.1 and the results are interesting


I did notice in 2019.40.2 it handles mini roundabouts like a true BMW driver and just drives straight across them with no confusion at all, not sure if that's a good thing though. ;)
 
In general, autopilot seems improved in 2019.4.2 on motorways. On back roads it seems to forget to slow down more than before, so it feels like a step backwards in some places.

My only concerns for its use on motorways are these now:
- It still merges on when the lane ends instead of sooner and doesn't indicate.
- When exiting on NoA it does 3 blinks at the junction then leaves, not start indicating far in advance like other drivers.

I guess technically there's nothing majorly wrong with those...? It's just American driving style I think so it seems strange to us, and not indicating on I'm not sure about the legality of that but again, that's normal in the US. Autopilot just needs an EU tune up. :)
 
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[QUOTE="LavanyaLea,

The autopilot was awful at roundabouts. And these are big A-road roundabouts with road markings. It seems to barge in and never slow down or pay attention to incoming traffic. Luckily in the 3 occasions I let my car go into roundabouts on autopilot, we didn’t have to give way to traffic on the right (there was none or they were all going straight), but the car did not slow down to check at all.

And then it decided to go straight on at the round about, aiming for the central island (rather than going around), and then when it detected an obstruction, the autopilot immediately disengaged and I had to swerve or take control straight away. It was very bad when my car was approaching roundabout on the left (slow) lane as by going straight it was going into the path of the right lane! But luckily there was no traffic.
.

Autopilot on roundabouts?
I'm not sure.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, roundabouts are not Tesla's shining moment. Here in the US I expect they are often smaller diameter than what you seem to be describing. The car literally has no idea what to do. If no one is coming it still wants to drive over the curb but instead waits for the last moment and yells at me to take over the steering wheel! I'm pretty sure if anyone is coming it has no idea what to do. I think the turns are just too sharp for what the road navigation is capable of seeing at the moment. Give it a few years and some more hardware upgrades.
 
In general, autopilot seems improved in 2019.4.2 on motorways. On back roads it seems to forget to slow down more than before, so it feels like a step backwards in some places.

My only concerns for its use on motorways are these now:
- It still merges on when the lane ends instead of sooner and doesn't indicate.
- When exiting on NoA it does 3 blinks at the junction then leaves, not start indicating far in advance like other drivers.

I guess technically there's nothing majorly wrong with those...? It's just American driving style I think so it seems strange to us, and not indicating on I'm not sure about the legality of that but again, that's normal in the US. Autopilot just needs an EU tune up. :)

No, the US doesn't allow merges without a proper signal. Fortunately for us Tesla navigator rules aren't rules of the road. ;-)
 
I'm curious... When merging onto a highway do you have to indicate with Autopilot enabled or does it just merge on its own?

90% of the time I have it run out of on-ramp as it thinks it's in lane already, such as here:
https://i.gyazo.com/fa672d9ccf8651e42643d1886788961e.mp4
(The clip for that cut at a bad time and it's like 5 seconds ahead on the next clip, but you get the idea!)

Does this happen because I'm indicating to merge...? But if I don't indicate, it doesn't realize it needs to merge and just flies up beside traffic in my experience. It's tough to decide which is the right action... Of course I know merging myself is the right action for now. :p
 
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