So because it worked fine for you over 100 whole miles everyone having issues must be lying or exaggerating? Yes people are talking about specific experiences which leads them to make generalized statements like it doesn’t work well enough for me to risk using at night. I personally don’t use AP at night anymore with my wife in the car because of the sudden 5-10mph slowdowns makes her car sick. Also in busy traffic I don’t want to risk getting rear ended. So I agree with that person saying it’s unusable at night.
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Vision Only vs Radar - Observations from a 3 year owner
- Thread starter richa65
- Start date
EVNow
Well-Known Member
The problem with sweeping statements is that they are almost always wrong. You can say its not useable for you ... but obviously that doesn't make it "unuseable" for others. I use it all the time at night (except when raining heavily, when it refuses to work).
Even the phantom braking I had in 10.2/10.3.1 has largely disappeared in 10.4. Yes, I do get some slight slowdowns (2 to 5 mph) - but that can happen if we drive manually and just let the accelerator pedal go.
PDX-Y
Member
Uh, yes, because the original statement was that it was "unusable", and I used it. Ergo it's "usable", and the original statement is false. If you want to detail your actual experiences then that would be extremely helpful, then people can chime in to provide hints or explanations and maybe we can all figure out why you're having so much trouble. Absolutist statements don't do anything but spark arguments like this one.
hate to wheel out "unusable" as well but . . .
Scene setting - Hwy95 between Elgin and Taylor, TX is a smooth, curvy, fast road which I've travelled hundreds of times over the years.
As AP has improved in general this drive has become better and better, only the occasional deciding that the speed limit wasn't the posted 65 but instead was 45 has become the only issue. Last drove it on radar AP about four weeks ago.
However, last week I drove it with FSD beta and had my passengers begging me to drive manually because of the jerkiness and general lack of smoothness.
This weekend I turned off FSD and drove it using AP, but still with vision only.
This time it was me that gave up. Five (5) alert/red wheel/take over now warnings, so many slow downs and general crappy driving - I couldn't take it any longer and drove the last half manually. They have turned a wonderful smooth, relaxing drive into a choice of manually driving or letting the virtual 5-year old that is vision AP drive the car.
Radar AP was never this bad.
This is worst driving I've ever experienced using AP
Scene setting - Hwy95 between Elgin and Taylor, TX is a smooth, curvy, fast road which I've travelled hundreds of times over the years.
As AP has improved in general this drive has become better and better, only the occasional deciding that the speed limit wasn't the posted 65 but instead was 45 has become the only issue. Last drove it on radar AP about four weeks ago.
However, last week I drove it with FSD beta and had my passengers begging me to drive manually because of the jerkiness and general lack of smoothness.
This weekend I turned off FSD and drove it using AP, but still with vision only.
This time it was me that gave up. Five (5) alert/red wheel/take over now warnings, so many slow downs and general crappy driving - I couldn't take it any longer and drove the last half manually. They have turned a wonderful smooth, relaxing drive into a choice of manually driving or letting the virtual 5-year old that is vision AP drive the car.
Radar AP was never this bad.
This is worst driving I've ever experienced using AP
EVNow
Well-Known Member
I've been trying to figure out when the slow downs / phantom braking happens in twisty roads.
I think general slow downs happen anytime FSD sees some non-zero chance of a collision (they must still have a > 0 threshold) and phantom braking when that probability is higher. It doesn't always happen when a car appears to be coming directly towards you on a twisty road ... but happens more often on twisty roads. Tells me they need more training and optimization.
Another proxy for incorrect detection that would result in phantom braking is Navigate on Autopilot wanting to switch lanes to the faster lane. It's not as annoying but same underlying issue of incorrectly detecting the closest in-path vehicle. A few weeks ago we were traveling on a twisty mountain interstate, and FSD Beta with Vision Autopilot kept wanting to switch lanes away from far-away trucks that were actually in the other lane.
linux-works
Active Member
its coming up on 1 year since I last took a tesla OTA update. my radar m3 works the same as when I bought it, about 2 years ago.
ob disc: I drive in the bay area where it knows the streets better than any other set of roads in the world. so YMMV but I dont get much PB at all, even with overpasses and shadows.
I wont update my car, maybe ever, at this point. it may get sold, when its time, with this very version on it and the next buyer will have to decide if they want to sync up or stay rogue
rogue == better, for me.
ob disc: I drive in the bay area where it knows the streets better than any other set of roads in the world. so YMMV but I dont get much PB at all, even with overpasses and shadows.
I wont update my car, maybe ever, at this point. it may get sold, when its time, with this very version on it and the next buyer will have to decide if they want to sync up or stay rogue
rogue == better, for me.
I thought that too, I also found its much more likely approaching the brow of a hill where the road "disappears" - but its doing that with heavily shadowed roads too. It happened so often on my drive yesterday that I was starting to see so many different "causes"
The cynic in me says its all those things that radar is good at for confirmation that there really is a road.
There are a myriad of mini-events, where it slows down by 1-2 mph, then almost immediately returns to set speed. Just enough to cause every passengers head to bob forward and back and make them nauseous. I'm sure my family hate me for getting the beta.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Yes - but my kids enjoy it ! But then, I've not gone on any long drives yet ...
I experience phantom braking when using AP when passing a truck on the left. My vision only Model Y seems to often believe that it will crash into a truck and will frequently (say 2 out of every 5 trucks it passes) brake quite hard when approaching a truck.
I get significant phantom breaking when a semi truck passes by on a 2 lane highway....probably 85% of the time.
I have driven over 20,000 miles on my MY since I got it in December 2020. Most of that from April to October of 2021. Based on my experience so far, I had decided that I would not get FSD unless it offered better driving experience than the standard AP. So, I came looking to this forum to see if FSD offered better driving experience than AP. If so, I was going to try one month of FSD to see what it was like.
Looking through the posts, it seems like FSD does not offer better experience than AP. (I'm curious, when did they stop including radars in Model Ys? Does Tesla use infrared sensing?)
My experience and thoughts.
1. I do not use auto-steer in construction zones. Several times the car would not move to avoid obstacles. An example was on an interstate at night through a construction zone. The marked single lane I was on veered right with a large parked truck directly in front. For some reason, the car did not follow the lane. I waited as long as I could before manually overriding. Who knows, the car might have acted correctly but it was getting too iffy for me. Also, the car sees cones and lane markers, but if the cones are on the traffic side of the marker, the car does not seem to take that into account. It still tries to center using the lane markers.
2. The cruise control has been pretty good generally. However, there were 3 times when it did hard phantom braking. Once it was due to an overpass that was coming up (I think - it may have been for some other reason). This was on a clear day. Another time it hard braked for no reason. Again on a clear day. I forget what happened the third time. There have been numerous light braking. Now when I'm driving, I have to be alert to press the accelerator in case the car decides to slow down or brake hard for no reason. I imagine many cars behind me got annoyed.
3. It's really irritating how the car tries to auto-center when autosteer is first turned on. Why does it need to center hard immediately? It should know what's in the surrounding areas. Why not center more gradually unless immediate action is needed to avoid a collision? Similarly, why can't Tesla follow the left lane marker when in the right-most lane and right lane marker when in the left-most lane? This would avoid problems with trying to center as the lane gets wider for exits and entrances. I'm surprised I haven't gotten pulled over for DUI because the car veers right and then moves back for exits and entrances.
4. If the car tries to stay in the center of the lane, why does it sometimes move to the outside of the curve when following curves in the road? On two lane roads, I can imagine this would be very disconcerting to oncoming cars to see a car wandering toward them. The car does not cross the median, but still I don't know why the software can't be tweaked to center the car on turns.
5. But AP works very well in heavy rain. I was caught in heavy rain several times, and the car had no problem keeping itself centered in the lane even when I had a hard time seeing the lane.
6. Which reminds me - the Auto wiper mode leaves a lot to be desired. It had problems with snow last year and rain in the warmer weather. It wouldn't turn on in a timely manner. Sometimes I'd have to press the button to intermittently turn it on until it did start automatically. Sometimes I had to turn it on manually because it never did turn on. Sometimes it doesn't turn off. The rain may subside but the wiper still goes too fast such that the wiper will squeak against the dry windshield. And sometimes the wiper will turn on when there are too many bug spots on the windshield. That wouldn't be bad if the cleaner was sprayed, but no, it just keeps trying to remove the "rain."
Well, that's what I can think of now.
Looking through the posts, it seems like FSD does not offer better experience than AP. (I'm curious, when did they stop including radars in Model Ys? Does Tesla use infrared sensing?)
My experience and thoughts.
1. I do not use auto-steer in construction zones. Several times the car would not move to avoid obstacles. An example was on an interstate at night through a construction zone. The marked single lane I was on veered right with a large parked truck directly in front. For some reason, the car did not follow the lane. I waited as long as I could before manually overriding. Who knows, the car might have acted correctly but it was getting too iffy for me. Also, the car sees cones and lane markers, but if the cones are on the traffic side of the marker, the car does not seem to take that into account. It still tries to center using the lane markers.
2. The cruise control has been pretty good generally. However, there were 3 times when it did hard phantom braking. Once it was due to an overpass that was coming up (I think - it may have been for some other reason). This was on a clear day. Another time it hard braked for no reason. Again on a clear day. I forget what happened the third time. There have been numerous light braking. Now when I'm driving, I have to be alert to press the accelerator in case the car decides to slow down or brake hard for no reason. I imagine many cars behind me got annoyed.
3. It's really irritating how the car tries to auto-center when autosteer is first turned on. Why does it need to center hard immediately? It should know what's in the surrounding areas. Why not center more gradually unless immediate action is needed to avoid a collision? Similarly, why can't Tesla follow the left lane marker when in the right-most lane and right lane marker when in the left-most lane? This would avoid problems with trying to center as the lane gets wider for exits and entrances. I'm surprised I haven't gotten pulled over for DUI because the car veers right and then moves back for exits and entrances.
4. If the car tries to stay in the center of the lane, why does it sometimes move to the outside of the curve when following curves in the road? On two lane roads, I can imagine this would be very disconcerting to oncoming cars to see a car wandering toward them. The car does not cross the median, but still I don't know why the software can't be tweaked to center the car on turns.
5. But AP works very well in heavy rain. I was caught in heavy rain several times, and the car had no problem keeping itself centered in the lane even when I had a hard time seeing the lane.
6. Which reminds me - the Auto wiper mode leaves a lot to be desired. It had problems with snow last year and rain in the warmer weather. It wouldn't turn on in a timely manner. Sometimes I'd have to press the button to intermittently turn it on until it did start automatically. Sometimes I had to turn it on manually because it never did turn on. Sometimes it doesn't turn off. The rain may subside but the wiper still goes too fast such that the wiper will squeak against the dry windshield. And sometimes the wiper will turn on when there are too many bug spots on the windshield. That wouldn't be bad if the cleaner was sprayed, but no, it just keeps trying to remove the "rain."
Well, that's what I can think of now.
Not true about high-beams. I use it all the time without them. Yes, they'll turn on when it 'thinks' there is no car in vicinity but a flick of the stick and they're off. They'll stay off until you either put them back in Auto (not ON so it might not turn on right away) or you disengage and re-engage AP.
Phantom braking is an issue though, but not just at night, daytime too and mostly when the road is curving to the right on a two way road as it thinks the car is in its direct path. I've gotten accustomed to move my foot over the accelerator when the road is curving right to prepare to overcome the phantom braking that will probably happen if I cross a car coming in the opposite direction. I noticed though that following a car mostly stops phantom braking as it blocks the view of the incoming cars.
pchanco
Member
Just got a 2022 M3 with Vision a few days ago and I am very disappointed in AP. Coming from a 2020 M3 with radar, I had very few Phantom braking even on two lane highways. My first road trip had so many Phantom braking I had to disable and drive manually. Today in light fog, the AP would alert poor vision and slow down to 20 mph. My 2020 would go through heavier fog faster than I care to. I hope they fix this.
It's nice to hear this from an Tesla owner who had previous experience with the radar based AP/TACC.
It is super frustrating as an owner of vision-only car to have all of the dismissive responses from those that have the radar based system and have not had the joy, thrills and excitement of using TACC on a vision car.
CDennis100
Member
I travel a lot for work and use rentals all the time. Love my Tesla but sadly, my last two rentals were Camrys and their auto steer and TACC equivalents are MUCH better than Tesla AP. I think this is a radar based system but didn’t check…just know it worked well and had zero PB episodes. Hey Tesla…take some lessons or BRING BACK RADAR, or make this vision as good as competitors.It's nice to hear this from an Tesla owner who had previous experience with the radar based AP/TACC.
It is super frustrating as an owner of vision-only car to have all of the dismissive responses from those that have the radar based system and have not had the joy, thrills and excitement of using TACC on a vision car.
In other news, 0-60 in the Camry felt like 10 or more seconds and boy that four cylinder was loud and struggling! Long live quiet instant torque!
Lowchrg
Beta Blue-balled
Add Openpilot to that Camry and you would be experiencing the pinnacle of a smooth experience. Seriously. A friend with Openpilot on their 2021 Corolla blew my absolute mind with how well it performed compared to basic Tesla AP. Obviously Tesla FSD still gets you some more features but wow is it smooth.
Tha_Ape
Active Member
I have it on my 2017 Prius... it's got its pluses and minuses, but it's great for hands free chill driving. not as precise with turns as the tesla, but I tend to only use that stuff on the highway so it's great!
Also, lane changing is way better than Tesla AP. Teslas is so annoying with making you disengage and re- engage AP just to change a lane.
Lowchrg
Beta Blue-balled
From what I have read, the type of car it works best with is pretty particular and based on the torque the mfg allows. On the 2021 Corolla it seemed more precise than Tesla in my opinion.
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