First day impressions: Now immune to white line fever
Mine got a workout today with a variety of well marked city roads including roadways and freeways and I guess I'm a bit easier to please than most folks here as this was a memorable day of joy for me on some really hectic city roads, with even some rain at the tail end which didn't seem to cause any panic.
I found some of its moves amusing -- you really should keep an eye on it -- but it also can chew-up simple roadway miles perfectly well on its own. It does like to lean closer on the drivers (left) side to parallel (and as was also said, oncoming) cars and lanes than I do, I guess I'm more of a "space bubble" driver than Model S is. But surprisingly this seems to keep it out of most sewers and potholes. For all the stress TACC and Autodrive relieves, I guess I can deal with this wee bit of anxiety. For what it's worth the other drivers didn't seem to notice or care about my "new" place in the lane.
So with the exception of the first few minutes on a city street where it seemed to be a bit wild (either it or I was calibrating as I was sure it wanted to slam us into a curb) and also excepting some hilarious car-magneting (good follow distance, clear paint lines seem to prevent it), and the occasional I-know-what-it-will-do-even-though-it's-actually-the-wrong-thing moments (eg. following painted lines where we shouldn't go) I did not experience any really sloppy maneuvers or drunken ping-ponging like others have reported. Perhaps it's related to the lane widths and curb sizes/shapes/materials in different places. If so maybe Toronto streets are finally good for something other than congestion ? We are pretty militant about road safety in Ontario.
Turns: I do agree that any sort of proper turn freaks it out, but I almost feel like encouraging it for trying, as it seems to give up exactly half-way through. I have a feeling they'll tackle this one but it might not be easy (eg. might end up being a very slowwww turn).
Off-Ramps: Like Racerx22b and others reported, mine really really wanted to take every off-ramp.
Intersections: It won't start in or at an intersection, but traversing them at speed was no problem at all, but...
No more "Hold" @ stoplights ! I don't remember it dropping to HOLD on city streets, today once. Now we really need that red light and stop sign detection ! Freeway with a red lights are out there, in case the lawyers need to ensure it's "not intended for city streets".
Nanny-related stuff: Maintenance of TACC speed when manually grabbing the wheel was another pleasant surprise, as was the "hold the wheel" disclaimer and then you're on your own, no nags. It just asks you to take over when it's lost.
Changing lanes: Thanks Racerx22b I thought I read you had to fully apply the turn signal, which is what I was doing today. Lane changes are done admirably, or not at all if it lacks confidence. As has been reported a lane change isn't enough to cancel the signal, and since I have a feeling it's a mechanical release (ie. needs a certain amount of steering effort to cancel) it's going to remain this way for our cars.
UI & Brake lights: FINALLY, we can clearly see when regen activates brake lights. It happens a lot less than I expected, and I am happy about that as I have a pet peeve about brake riders. Flat UI is fine and change is good IMHO. The skin change is actually much more minor than I imagined.
I love the visualizations of all the sensor data, it paints a clear picture of Autopilot's frame of mind. Cars pop in and out, lanes lines are displayed as the car interprets them, and the ultrasonic sensors now seem to react at a useful speed.
I'm not a sour grapes guy but I do think it would be great to have a permanent rubber-band style real-time energy BAR beside battery, with a number beside it, just like battery level. I'm of the thinking that real-time energy use is a safety thing as well as a "power user" AND "hyper miler" thing, so it's vital info in more than one respect, to more than one group of owners. Isn't that enough ?? There's totally space there for it and I can't imagine it taking many compute of graphics cycles.
And I don't mind having the temp only on the 17" it's almost exactly the same viewing distance anyway. People, fight the right fights...
BUT when are we going to get real changes to the UI, eg. a refreshed NAV, more than 2 trip odos, settings pages for things like scroll wheel sensitivity, reversing the scroll wheel direction of the sunroof, heck I even want to change 1-tap to pass to 4 blinks. Why can't I do that ? These are ABSOLUTELY MINOR changes compared to developing a self-driving car. TM loves the Big Picture and seems to forget about the small things, but eg. better Voice Recognition commands and better navigation are not minor things. Have they completely forgotten about the panicky Supercharger trip planner ?
Emergency Avoidance: Haven't tried it ! Hope I never do. I'm confident it would do its best, erring on the side of caution, before I grab at the controls and use a dramatically slower but hopefully better decision engine to possibly do the opposite thing to get out of the trouble.
Genuine thanks to TM and the beta testers... and cheers to all of us extended beta testers