Version 9 on AP1

[bmah]

Are you sure? Some of the "AP1 improvements" I've missed out on since 7.1 include frequent AP nags and fantom breaking at overpasses. My car has neither of those "improvements." Every time there is an update I read what people say hoping the reasons I haven't updated go away, and usually I have found even MORE reasons not to update from the version I have and love the way it works. Their trajectory has been to worsen the user experience and also make the driver pay more attention to the car's screen (by making things harder to see or get to) than to the road.

FWIW, the inclusion of AP nags have been pretty much a no-op for me, and I can recall only one instance of phantom braking. To me, AP1 is doing as well or better with 9.0 than what I remember on 7.1. However I might not post that assertion as "loudly" or as frequently as people who think that 9.0 is horrible.

Bruce.

 

[Saghost]

FWIW, the inclusion of AP nags have been pretty much a no-op for me, and I can recall only one instance of phantom braking. To me, AP1 is doing as well or better with 9.0 than what I remember on 7.1. However I might not post that assertion as "loudly" or as frequently as people who think that 9.0 is horrible.

Bruce.

Agreed. The new prompts this year were annoying enough that I spent some time experimenting with different wheel grips to satisfy it. I finally found a couple it likes that I don't see as really dangerous - I put my hand on the wheel at about 4:30 or 7:30, and let the weight of the arm rest on it. I feel the wheel movement, I can takeover any time, and if AP suddenly drops somehow, I won't instantly veer too much.

I'm not as certain of improvements in AP1 for version 9.0, but there were huge strides made last year in handling shadows and bad weather and poor markings and the like that 7.1 won't have.

 

[3mp_kwh]

In case not everyone's seen the tweet, Elon was messaged: "My man, the new UI is driving us insane. Let us dock the camera instead of the map." To which he replied: "Will be in next point release". Not what I miss, but just passing this along, from 10/22.

I'm not as certain of improvements in AP1 for version 9.0, but there were huge strides made last year in handling shadows and bad weather and poor markings and the like that 7.1 won't have.

What 7.1 had was the upper tool bar remaining fixed, while the map was up. V8 brought with it the extra tap, to bring it back up, and delay and downward animating "+" and "-" zoom controls. It was either 7.1, or earlier, that put the cartoon on the driver display, regardless of whether you had AP (cars w/o hardware were "allowed" to keep their property the same). I still like the first energy display. This isn't a change resistant thing. Simply preference. Not here to argue wanting to keep what I bought.

 

[Saghost]

In case not everyone's seen the tweet, Elon was messaged: "My man, the new UI is driving us insane. Let us dock the camera instead of the map." To which he replied: "Will be in next point release". Not what I miss, but just passing this along, from 10/22.



What 7.1 had was the upper tool bar remaining fixed, while the map was up. V8 brought with it the extra tap, to bring it back up, and delay and downward animating "+" and "-" zoom controls. It was either 7.1, or earlier, that put the cartoon on the driver display, regardless of whether you had AP (cars w/o hardware were "allowed" to keep their property the same). I still like the first energy display. This isn't a change resistant thing. Simply preference. Not here to argue wanting to keep what I bought.

Yup, there are non AP related downsides to upgrading.

You have to decide what's most important to you, and it's your decision - but don't think that AP hasn't gotten better at driving the car since 7.1. It has.

Whether it's gotten enough better for you to want to deal with the UI changes and prompts? That's a decision for you to make (at least until events force your hand.)

 

[headcase]

In my 40k miles of driving, the AP1 improvements / fixes I have experienced with the ongoing 8.x updates:
• no more truck lust
• more dead center in the lanes
• no more "hunting" on hill crests
• better handling on curves
• more confident / less hunting when going thru intersections and areas with no lane markings
• although not AP related, somewhat improved MCU responsiveness

The downside of the recent 8.x updates for me have been:
• increased nag rate
• lack of consistently working homelink (has varied on each point release)
• current hands-on-wheel visual warning is lousy (full surround blue bar was better)
• USB media player was better before in 7.x

So in my opinion, the tradeoffs have been worth it when it comes to updating to the latest 8.x builds on AP1.

9.x for AP1? So far, I'd say NO. Always-on Nav (including in the background when running another app on top) isn't for me. IMHO, split screen apps on a vertical 17" screen was, and is, the way to go.

All in all, I'm completely content running my AP1 car with the latest 8.x build. Is it perfect? No, nothing is. But not one instance of phantom braking after 40k of miles, decent rain-sensing wipers that can actually detect rain drops in the dark, and it can read speed signs. Sweetness.

 

[aesculus]

Admittingly I am not much of an AP user. I bought it mostly for TACC. Recently we took a road trip and I decided to test out the auto lane keeping a bit in V9. My test area was around Mammoth Lakes, CA on US395 which has two lanes of traffic each way. I found the auto lane keeping pretty useless in this area. Some of it I attribute to the road. There are some turns in this section (both northbound and southbound) that are a bit extreme IMHO for a freeway but none the less they are not out of the question at all either.

My three big complaints are:

1. I was constantly being disconnected with my light hold on the wheel which was too much and it thought I was trying to overpower it. This happened even on straight sections but was really noticeable in those areas that had the more pronounced curves. Five disconnects in as many miles was way too much. If I did not have at least that much resistance I would get the nag.
2. The car had a "wandering" tendency in lane keeping, even in straight sections. It was kind of like a slightly drunken sailor. Not enough to be dangerous but just not comfortable. The car just did not track straight, even in sections that were straight. It was kind of the experience you would have with a new driver that was looking out too close to the car. This might have contributed to #1.
3. While they have improved the lane changing some, I still find it too aggressive. IMHO if you can feel lateral movement during a lane change it is too much. I prefer a much shallower lane change than has been programmed.

When I drive I probably don't track exactly down the center of the lane on curves sort of doing the racing car track (tighter going into the turn and relaxing a bit leaving a turn). The car seems to want to track down the middle at all times. The car also seems to be hunting for the lane within a 100 yards of so while a good human driver is looking much farther down the road and gauging how they should set up and execute lane keeping.

Anyway these are just my personal experiences and feelings. Most of these issues are not noticed by other Tesla drivers I have talked to that use AP often.

 

[rsg123]

After the 42.2 update that allowed the rear camera view very close to the top of the screen, I am a happy camper with v9 on AP1. Although I was initially annoyed with the always-on-the-screen navi, it has encouraged me to use it more often. This has resulted in the car suggesting alternate routes for my daily commute several times that have already saved me a few hours combined.
I’ve found that I still get annoyed with the constant AP nags though. I heard rumors of some kind of “expert mode” you could earn to received fewer nags but that doesn’t seem to have materialized. The frequency of nags is ridiculous.

 

[whitex]

After the 42.2 update that allowed the rear camera view very close to the top of the screen, I am a happy camper with v9 on AP1. Although I was initially annoyed with the always-on-the-screen navi, it has encouraged me to use it more often. This has resulted in the car suggesting alternate routes for my daily commute several times that have already saved me a few hours combined.
I’ve found that I still get annoyed with the constant AP nags though. I heard rumors of some kind of “expert mode” you could earn to received fewer nags but that doesn’t seem to have materialized. The frequency of nags is ridiculous.

You cannot see much of the navi if you put the camera close to the top, because it requires you to allocate 50% of the screen the useless media player window. With apps never coming, web browser mostly not working and even when working it can only be paired with navigation, the large screen just for more useless now with v9 - all hype, no function. What's the point of a large screen if all it can display is one thing and a media player?

 

[d-bone]

You cannot see much of the navi if you put the camera close to the top, because it requires you to allocate 50% of the screen the useless media player window. With apps never coming, web browser mostly not working and even when working it can only be paired with navigation, the large screen just for more useless now with v9 - all hype, no function. What's the point of a large screen if all it can display is one thing and a media player?

You can collapse the media player down to about two inches or so to the bottom of the window, with the rear camera (or energy graph) on top of that. With it like this, you still see about 1/3 of the top portion of the screen for the nav. If you tap the drag handle of the media player, it just toggles between big and bigger, but if you drag the drag handle down, you can collapse it much more.

 

[whitex]

You can collapse the media player down to about two inches or so to the bottom of the window, with the rear camera (or energy graph) on top of that. With it like this, you still see about 1/3 of the top portion of the screen for the nav. If you tap the drag handle of the media player, it just toggles between big and bigger, but if you drag the drag handle down, you can collapse it much more.

Yea, so exactly what I said - no way to keep the camera on top and use nav or anything else but the media player at the same time. Your suggestion of making the media player smaller, moves the camera down, farther from your line of sight. You can hide the media player too, moving the camera further down. In the original software you could pick any 2 apps, and could use nav on the instrument cluster without showing it on the main screen if you didn't want to as well.
When Tesla says "your car gets better with updates" they mean better for them, not the user.

 

[David29]

What Iike in v9.0, is that the autopilot is much better. when in traffic, it just doesn't break suddently. it does the stop much smoother. an big + for me.
Overall, it easy to get use to the new UI.
I recommand you to update it to v9.0 especially if you use autopilot a lot.

I updated, and I have AP1. I have had it a week or 10 days so far. My reactions are that:

*First, it is useful to consider the two screens separately, the instrument cluster and the center screen. the considerations are quite different.

*For AP2/2.5 cars, the instrument cluster display clearly has advantages, now showing more information and enabling the use of added features such as navigating with lane changes. the photos I have seen are the very first time I have been a bit envious of cars with AP2 or later hardware. Until now, the autopilot functionality of AP1 has been about the same as in later cars, but no more.

*For AP1 cars, there seems to be little if any functional difference in how autopilot works, but the instrument cluster display has been modified somewhat, in small ways. There is no particular benefit that I can see to the UI change itself, with respect to Autopilot, for AP1 cars, but the changes are small so I do not mind. There may be operational code changes that are advantageous.

*The center screen is an entirely different matter. The center screen displays seem more crowded, with smaller fonts and icons, and more use of shades of gray. I find myself having more trouble clicking on icons -- it takes more precise finger-pointing and takes more time, hence it is more distracting, at least for now. A good example is the permanent bottom row of the screen. The rear window defroster button is further to the right now, harder to see and not as easily distinguished from the windshield defroster button next to it, and a bit harder to click. A small thing, perhaps, but I wonder if Tesla did a human factors review of the screen changes. I find the audio screens particularly confusing to navigate. I have seen many posts from people who find some portion or other of the layout changes to be confusing or disadvantageous in some way. Some of the changes seem to be change for change's sake, not for any apparent benefit.

*As to the point of being opposed to change in general, I think there is substantial merit to caution when considering the need to change how people interact with their cars -- The mere fact that the UI is rearranged presents a learning curve. It takes a while to find everything again, and to develop new muscle memory of where to click and where to look. To me, there is no compelling advantage to the rearrangement itself, so it presents a risk of confusion, mistakes, and delays. Why did Tesla do it? How does it help? There are about a quarter million cars, with probably close to half a million drivers, around the world who are familiar with the UI as it was. Compelling all those drivers to re-learn the UI had better have a substantial payoff. It is not apparent that it has.

I am not saying the new center screen is "bad," but I don't see it as better. I am sure I will learn the new interface, as I did when we went from version 7 to version 8. But to me, a large part of this smacks of the type of mentality that people criticize Microsoft for -- their periodic restructuring of the big Office applications like Word and Excel drive people crazy, because everyone has to re-learn how the commands are grouped, where they are located in the menus, and so on, often with little apparent benefit except that they conform to some new "fashion" in software design. The difference is that someone learning a new version of Word is sitting at a desk and can spend a few extra seconds finding the menu item, with no risk. They are not sitting in a 4700 pound car traveling down the road at highway speeds and trying to find the button to turn on the steering wheel heater in its new location. Tesla should be very cautious about changing the user environment now that there is a substantial number of cars and users, who all will have to re-learn where to find their information and how to take certain actions. Changes should have enough merit to warrant that learning effort and the risks of errors during the learning period.

 

[David29]

Interesting. I didn't notice much difference in AP behavior after the update.

Nor did I. But if the performance did improve, it was not because of the UI changes, it was separate. In other words, rearranging the UI and changing the operational code for AP are separate elements of v9, except for the instrument cluster changes for AP2/2.5 cars.

 

[whitex]

Nor did I. But if the performance did improve, it was not because of the UI changes, it was separate. In other words, rearranging the UI and changing the operational code for AP are separate elements of v9, except for the instrument cluster changes for AP2/2.5 cars.

I don't use AP much as I still consider it requires more attention than driving myself (it does allow my attention to wonder though, so keeping my attention on the road is yet another thing I need to dedicate some mental effort to - increased nags helped a little). That said, I try it out here and there, so I tried AP1 with the v9 update on two occasions and it was weaving within the lane more than I remember before. It could be that we're not in the rainy season so the camera has a hard time telling where the wet lane markers are and GPS might not be as strong through the clouds, but it was definitely weaving a lot compared to the last time I tried this past summer. I haven't tried AP2 EAP since it's my wife's car and I rarely drive it. I am happy v9 introduced better blind spot detection (for AP2 car, my AP1 blind spot detection is as unreliable as before) but the UI changes are just unnecessary and with no benefit to the driver whatsoever.