parked in a station car park yesterday - lines at an angle, so my closest point to the back wall was my rear corner. Had to guess as the camera wasn't nearly as useful as a flat-on approach. Ended up miles off but was too scared to get closer. Camera either says stop way too early, or says nothing until you're too close.
I'm now getting out, walking to the back to see how much space, tutting and then shuffling back a foot like I'm incapable of parking..
I can sympathise... what irks me when I hear people recounting stories like this is that some people tie themselves in knots to defend Tesla by making it a "don't you know how to drive?" thing.
For one thing I'm old enough to have witnessed cars getting bigger, with more and more impact protection that has served to make using ones mirrors and spatial awareness of the car extents a lot more challenging than it used to be. Back In My Day™ you were basically a single sheet of metal away from being outside of the car anyway, so you could easily work out where the extents were.
That is definitely not the case now - the rear window on a Model 3 at least is woeful in terms of seeing anything, so you're reliant on the mirrors and camera (which lags ever so slightly). The front - even I'll admit that I am not 100% comfortable about where I feel the front ends, and I'm guilty of using the parking sensors to somewhat casually do the last metre or so of work for me.
Secondly - we live in a world where these driver conveniences exist, and have done for many years, more than a decade in some cases. Cars that cost significantly less than Teslas come with them. Isn't the point of technology and progress to make driving less and less of a mental burden? If not, we might as well advocate for getting rid of electric windows, power steering, etc. "What's wrong, isn't your arm strong enough to wind it up and down?"
I found that RSymons vision update video shocking, but not surprising. When USS was first removed I remember watching
this video that covered the issue at the front, namely that there is a 3ft blind spot that the front cameras can't see - so any park distance guidance is necessarily based on what the car "remembers" seeing as you drive towards it. If the car hasn't built up a complete 3D model of what's in front - no small feat for a camera - then it is not going to see things that would damage the car if you drove into them.
Unfortunately I'm a pragmatist - and people are buying these cars in great numbers in spite of these issues, so Tesla is not remotely motivated to do anything to fix this. Until such time as that changes, or the wider media starts criticising them consistently for it in reviews, etc - nothing is going to change.
