Weird phantom sensations and hallucinations driving a model 3

[pyrosci]

Has anyone noticed these too, perhaps because an EV is so quiet and consistent day to day, little phantom sensations become noticeable and giving clues on how the brain and mind works. After 2 months and 6000km:

1. During constant speed autopilot, stepping on the accelerator pedal causes no acceleration for the first 10% or so of travel, but your head will bop forward expecting to be pushed back into the headrest. It is totally weird that the right ankle motion is neuromuscular-linked to the neck muscle, presumably from the cerebellum, to anticipate and compensate for the expected acceleration. Tried this about 50 times and it is perfectly reproducible and proportional.... weird!

2. Sometimes even when the car is off and on the driveway, walking up to it I seem to hallucinate the whirring sound (but much fainter than the actual sound) that it uses during reverse gear. I checked to be sure the car is indeed off, and snooping around I couldn't hear the sound anymore nor does it get louder or localise to any part of the vehicle. Maybe my ear or brain has associated the driveway with the reversing sound.

3. Phantom phone vibrations in the pant pocket. This isn't to do with the car but must be the same mechanism! Sometimes it feels like faint vibration notification coming from the phone in the pocket but there isn't one!

 

[terranx]

1) That's not surprising. Learned reflexes are a thing. It's not so much that the right angle is "neuromuscularly linked to the neck muscle" (well there are probably synapses formed to reinforce said reflex, but I digress), but more that your brain has learned that depressing your right ankle while sitting in a car leads to forward acceleration and to preemptively brace certain muscles in anticipation of that. It's for a similar reason why things can feel much jerkier when you're a passenger rather than a driver -- you don't have the information to make the same anticipatory adjustments

2) If you have your phone with you, it could be that something is waking up briefly when detecting the phone key

3) That most people get whether or not they own a Tesla

Tl;dr - you're human.

 

[Tronguy]

When the SO and I got the M3 back in 2018, we both noted that we got a little nauseous driving the car around. That eventually faded.

I thought about this a bit. I used to be in the blue-water Navy and, once or twice, got seasick, and knew people who did.

The tricky bit: When one is inside the ship and the ship is doing its rolling and pitching bit, along with going up and down like an express elevator at times, one's inner ears (and your sense of pressure on the soles of your feet and all.. think that's called kinesthesia) says to the brain, "You're bouncing around like there's no tomorrow!"

However, the walls are where they are, the overhead and deck are where they are, and everything looks absolutely still.

This is about the time one starts feeling nauseous. If one isn't feeling well, a decent solution is to go up to some weather deck or other where one can see the horizon. The moment one can see the horizon, SNAP! Your eyes can see where horizontal is and suddenly your inner ears and all are in agreement with your eyeballs and one realizes it's the ship bouncing all over the place. This whole method of banishing seasickness doesn't work for everybody, but it does work for quite a few people.

For what it's worth, after a while at sea, when the ship is pitching around, when one is walking down a corridor or something one.. sees.. the ship moving (that is, that the walls are moving and twisting), even though they're not, and one tends (a) not to get seasick and (b) not fall over or run into things.

As a result of this.. Well, my son told a small crowd one day that he always liked going on a subway with me when he was small. No matter what the subway cars were doing, I was solid as a rock and he could hang onto me and not fall over.

Now, back to Teslas. Teslas have instant torque, unlike ICEs. They also tend not to lean in turns, what with that battery down below. But the SO and I had been driving ICE cars for decades. One tightens up muscles and loosens others when going into and out of turns, accelerating, or decelerating. To the point that when one, say, presses the gas pedal, how fast one tightens up the muscles is a built-in reflexive habit. Or turns the wheel. Or how one expects the car to handle a turn.

The magic word is, "expects". I'll rhetorically stand here and state that how the car acts doesn't match up with one's expectations, there's an internal brain fart, just like that motion sickness, and one gets a bit nauseous. After a bit, one gets used to it, expectations change, and one is fine.

Except, of course, that with seasickness, there are people who Just Can't Take The Motions, and no amount of Dramamine can fix it for them. I'm no medical guy, but I'd guess that said people just can't get past that eyeballs-say-that-but-kinesthesia-and-the-middle-ears-say-this bit, and stuck they are. @sleepydoc, you got a comment?

 

[pyrosci]

when one is walking down a corridor or something one.. sees.. the ship moving (that is, that the walls are moving and twisting), even though they're not, and one tends (a) not to get seasick and (b) not fall over or run into things.

The eyeball is rather interestingly gyro-stabilised in all three axes, and this can sometimes be observed as nystagmus when activation is strong and persistent for whatever reason. Perhaps torsional eye motion is what makes the walls seem to twist. Your interesting observation that the novice who gets seasick doesn't see the wall motion, while the sea-adapted person does see the wall motion, seems to suggest:

Novice - eyes become cue-fixed to ship, conflicts with vestibule and kinesthesia. temporary solution is to cue fix to the water horizon.
Seasoned - eyes ignore cue-fix, and instead are linked stronger to vestibule and kinesthesia, can see the ship for its motion at all times.

It's for a similar reason why things can feel much jerkier when you're a passenger rather than a driver

Indeed I noticed this sitting as a passenger in the M3, more than all my other cars before it, probably because of the fast throttle response and acceleration.