Am usually pretty comfortable with Auto Pilot's capabilities and weaknesses. I always pay attention and thank got that was true today. Had two Oh *sugar* moments just a couple of minutes apart.
On my same daily path, on the freeway, no traffic at this point in time, was in the carpool lane cruising along with auto-pilot at 68 MPH (65 zone) when travelling around a very slight bend, toward the end of that bend the car decided it wanted to keep bending, crossing the yellow line to the left very abruptly and damn near hitting the center divider wall. There's not much room between the yellow line and the wall. For whatever reason, when in the far left carpool lane, auto pilot always has a habit of hugging the left side of the lane, closest to the wall. Makes me nervous every time. In regular lanes, it's well centered, except when beside a big rig, it tends to hover closest to the side of the big rig. This seems to be an area that needs improvement as it consistently wants to be closer to walls and large vehicles. Today, my nervousness came to fruition with that abrupt left. Thank god I was paying attention and was able to swerve to the right.
Second moment came about two miles later where traffic started to pick up a little. Was down to around 50 mph. Used the blinker for auto-pilot to change lanes. Speed was still set to 68, but car automatically slowed due to the traffic in front. A car to the right had just passed. Another thing I'm not crazy about with autopilot is that when you're stuck behind a car that slows you below the set speed, once that traffic clears, the car is very abrupt in trying to regain speed back to the set limit rather than a nice, natural gradual increase back to the set speed. Anyway, car to the right had just passed, I put on the blinker to pull in behind. Apparently as the car changed lanes, it saw the open space between the two cars and thought the lane was clear as it nailed the gas and headed straight toward the car that had just passed me. This one scared the crap out of me. Well, I guess the first one did too!! But this one got VERY close. Couldn't have been more than a foot between my front bumper and the rear bumper of the car before I got the car slowed down. The other car was probably travelling 55 mph and my car accelerated from 50 to 65 very quickly heading straight toward that car.
I've had autopilot cross lane lines before, but never so abruptly like it did today. I've never had it accelerate toward another car. Even paying attention, that was almost unavoidable. If you're behind another car, with or without autopilot and for some reason decided to nail the gas and accelerate toward that car, quickly closing your safe distance, you're going to struggle to get the car slowed back down to avoid running into it. This time though, the car accelerated itself, apparently not seeing the other car (a brown car by the way and sun straight over head, so no unusual glare). It caught be by surprise and certainly not a pleasant surprise.
Was disappointing as these were areas never of concern in the past year with the car. I've slowly stopped using auto-pilot in various circumstances that I don't feel I can trust it. These were two areas that I had previously trusted it. Now, they are two more situations that will no longer trust it to handle. The downside is, this just means I get to take less advantage of the feature due to its flaws. As such, I find myself in manual mode more and more and more and being less comfortable using a feature I love so much.
Had hoped to see improvements with this system over time. After the initial release of autopilot, there were immediate improvements, but it now seems to have tapered off as I haven't noticed any improvements over the past several months. Areas where it was weak 6 months ago, it's still weak today. In some cases, seems to have gotten worse.
Anybody else experience the same feeling? Has Tesla stopped working on improving the current autopilot, instead working on the next 2.0 version that will require new hardware? They seem to have a habit of that.
Notably, my P85D was promised to get faster. Then they decided to release Ludicrous mode. All improvements then went to Ludicrous equipped cars with those getting faster, but no notable improvements as originally promised for Insane mode cars. They came out with the new version and stopped improving the prior version. Fearing autopilot 1.0 may be falling into that category with the exception of safety restrictions added as necessary.
We used to get software updates every few months with some notable changes each time. Seems like it's been quite a while since the last one (aside form the physical changes which do existing owners no good). Too much energy now going into the Model 3 to keep improving the Model S software????
On my same daily path, on the freeway, no traffic at this point in time, was in the carpool lane cruising along with auto-pilot at 68 MPH (65 zone) when travelling around a very slight bend, toward the end of that bend the car decided it wanted to keep bending, crossing the yellow line to the left very abruptly and damn near hitting the center divider wall. There's not much room between the yellow line and the wall. For whatever reason, when in the far left carpool lane, auto pilot always has a habit of hugging the left side of the lane, closest to the wall. Makes me nervous every time. In regular lanes, it's well centered, except when beside a big rig, it tends to hover closest to the side of the big rig. This seems to be an area that needs improvement as it consistently wants to be closer to walls and large vehicles. Today, my nervousness came to fruition with that abrupt left. Thank god I was paying attention and was able to swerve to the right.
Second moment came about two miles later where traffic started to pick up a little. Was down to around 50 mph. Used the blinker for auto-pilot to change lanes. Speed was still set to 68, but car automatically slowed due to the traffic in front. A car to the right had just passed. Another thing I'm not crazy about with autopilot is that when you're stuck behind a car that slows you below the set speed, once that traffic clears, the car is very abrupt in trying to regain speed back to the set limit rather than a nice, natural gradual increase back to the set speed. Anyway, car to the right had just passed, I put on the blinker to pull in behind. Apparently as the car changed lanes, it saw the open space between the two cars and thought the lane was clear as it nailed the gas and headed straight toward the car that had just passed me. This one scared the crap out of me. Well, I guess the first one did too!! But this one got VERY close. Couldn't have been more than a foot between my front bumper and the rear bumper of the car before I got the car slowed down. The other car was probably travelling 55 mph and my car accelerated from 50 to 65 very quickly heading straight toward that car.
I've had autopilot cross lane lines before, but never so abruptly like it did today. I've never had it accelerate toward another car. Even paying attention, that was almost unavoidable. If you're behind another car, with or without autopilot and for some reason decided to nail the gas and accelerate toward that car, quickly closing your safe distance, you're going to struggle to get the car slowed back down to avoid running into it. This time though, the car accelerated itself, apparently not seeing the other car (a brown car by the way and sun straight over head, so no unusual glare). It caught be by surprise and certainly not a pleasant surprise.
Was disappointing as these were areas never of concern in the past year with the car. I've slowly stopped using auto-pilot in various circumstances that I don't feel I can trust it. These were two areas that I had previously trusted it. Now, they are two more situations that will no longer trust it to handle. The downside is, this just means I get to take less advantage of the feature due to its flaws. As such, I find myself in manual mode more and more and more and being less comfortable using a feature I love so much.
Had hoped to see improvements with this system over time. After the initial release of autopilot, there were immediate improvements, but it now seems to have tapered off as I haven't noticed any improvements over the past several months. Areas where it was weak 6 months ago, it's still weak today. In some cases, seems to have gotten worse.
Anybody else experience the same feeling? Has Tesla stopped working on improving the current autopilot, instead working on the next 2.0 version that will require new hardware? They seem to have a habit of that.
Notably, my P85D was promised to get faster. Then they decided to release Ludicrous mode. All improvements then went to Ludicrous equipped cars with those getting faster, but no notable improvements as originally promised for Insane mode cars. They came out with the new version and stopped improving the prior version. Fearing autopilot 1.0 may be falling into that category with the exception of safety restrictions added as necessary.
We used to get software updates every few months with some notable changes each time. Seems like it's been quite a while since the last one (aside form the physical changes which do existing owners no good). Too much energy now going into the Model 3 to keep improving the Model S software????
