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Every time that I settle in following another Tesla on I-5, I breathe a little easier. If most of the vehicles ahead of me are electrics, it is that much less pollution to inhale. I happily set the adaptive cruise control to whatever speed they are traveling. I can't wait for Tesla to provide...

TACC is the most useful part as it allows one to look around without the worry of the guy in front suddenly braking. That's important for safety as well as scenery. The Auto-steering is OK for uncomplicated freeway driving, but not much more. One can swivel around without the worry of...

An ability to supercharge between I-90 and the ferries across Puget Sound would at least open up the northern Olympic Peninsula. Since the Tesla Seattle Service Center is right at the I-90 terminus, its southern parking lot would be an obvious choice.

Squeezing battery and electric drivetrain into a vacated engine compartment of a handy donor vehicle sounds familiar. Isn't that what Tesla did eight years ago with 2500 Lotus cars with emptied engine compartments? While they did the EV the right way by 2012 with all the weight low and the...

If the problem develops gradually, suspect contacts or screws not tightened. If it always cuts out before reaching 40A, the extra resistance that is dropping the voltage at the car below about 190V may be a long run of too-small wire. I've encountered that twice with 120V outlets; they were...

Depends on your comfort zone. Last night I charged to 100% (240 miles in 70D), drove 60 mles on I-5 on TACC and Autosteer, with no stop-and-go, but found the tank 100 miles down. And by then I didn't have time to stop at the nearby supercharger. So I was glad that I had max charged overnight.

Tesla's method of detecting hand-on-wheel is presumably the slight drag when the Autosteering makes a small change in wheel angle. But if you are on a straight stretch of road, it may not make any little moves for you to resist in the timeout interval. So I make the habit of manually...

For the Burlington WA charger off I-5, seldom more than two others. But usually one, not none.

Manufacturers need to identify failure modes of the APs and tell us about them. Updates could then announce the elimination of a failure mode as well as new features (and their known failure modes).

So far as I can tell, the hands-on-the-wheel warning must operate on resisting the autosteering by a small amount. But what if you are on a long straight road where the autosteering doesn't move the wheel for long periods? Anyone know better?

People seem to think that the Tesla “autopilot,” better called Driver Assistance, gives a driver freedom to ignore their surroundings. In my experience, it allows the driver to keep looking around at the traffic in the way pilots are trained to do, scanning for approaching hazards such as...

This crash illustrates a virtue of proper freeways over those 55mph divided roads with left- and U-turn hazards which are so common in Florida.

Autopilot in planes and trains means following a specified course and speed, automatically making corrections for wind etc.; this does not include braking for sudden obstacles Tesla's AutoPilot (a combination of AutoSteering and TACC, not the same thing) includes braking for common obstacles...

NYTimes article today mentions that the Chevy Bolt will be getting a mirror that can be switched to a display for a rear-top mounted videocam. Looks to me that, instead of a fisheye lens, it uses a wide sensor or pieces together three square views, so it gets passing lanes. http://nyti.ms/253PFDQ

I have a similar Faraday cage problem with the parking gate at my condo. My solution was to reveal the transponder (a thick credit-card-sized package) via the sun roof. I have the mesh-netting shade insert that filters overhead sunlight, so I simply stuck the transponder to the middle of the...

If I stay out in the middle of the lane in my underground condo garage and get the "P," the AutpPark has to jockey 3x whereas I can do it in one.

Re "Unavailable" for long periods: in my case like yours, it was Valet Mode.

Extra 220v lines to the garage is a good idea but, for the benefit of those with a single feed but multiple EVs, remember that splitting the 220v 40A supply between two simultaneously charging EVs is only a problem in the first several hours of charging when "empty," when each vehicle gets 20A...

But only a 25% TACC saturation would nicely populate such an express lane. And even less would suffice to test the proposition that TACCs make for uniform flow.

We are all familiar with traffic jams in the middle of nowhere. There are no exits, merges, or hills to blame; it's just from the way car spacing is adjusted by drivers. Same thing after an obstruction has been cleared from the road but the traffic jam lasts for another hour as starting up is...

In WA, no sales tax on EVs. At 9% (we don't tax Microsoft millionaires on their capital gains), that amounts to $9k on a $90k price tag., atop the federal $7.5k tax credit. So instead of the $9+90k total, think $82.5k.

Saw the swerve from left lane to shoulder several times in recent weeks, though not last winter.

The displayed dash looks suitable for a readerboard that scrolls like a stock ticker.

LaneChanging is useful, not because it saves you from assessing the situation before initiating, but because it allows you to look around during the change without dragging the steering wheel with you as you twist. And TACC saves you from constant monitoring of the car ahead, again freeing you...

Apropos the comment about the funny feelings as the driver is made a passenger by TACC and AutoSteer: As driver, your brain is initiating the moves. The movement centers warn the sensory path to expect the consequent input. Mismatches are flagged as important. All of this is lost when you...

Near the intersection of I-5 and I-90, e.g., just north of the Seattle service center. It would nicely serve the ferry traffic needing to top up for the Olympic peninsula.

For both on-board and supercharger charging sequences, the system ramps up the current. I had assumed that that was to check voltage drops at places like the HVJB, just in case of bad contacts and the ensuing heat issues. No so? If so, what's new about this--are they just going slower up the...

It's getting so good that begineers need lessons on what it doesn't do. You can get so used to it handling stop-and-go that one can forget that it doesn't (yet) handle stop signs and red lights when no vehicle is in front of the Tesla.

Push away stalk to cancel both, then flip forward once to resume TACC. Why add an extra button for that? OP.

My wife's complaint about door latch design: she is used to a two-stage door unlock. First the driver's door unlocks, but not the others. Second hit on button opens all doors. Seemed pretty standard approach. Why the backward step by Tesla?

It seems to me that those small convex mirrors are too small for a quick glance. One just cannot judge the context. A better solution would be additional cameras and a wrap around composite display on the touch-screen. The backup camera is fine for parking but you need a flat image plane to...

On AutoDrive Teslas, the pushbutton at the end of the cruise control stalk served to turn on/off the cruise control in v6. With v7.0, it seems to do nothing. Suppose Tesla let the owner select a function to assign. What choices would you like on that list? Remember, this is an option for one...

Re 8 cameras, it would be nice to replace the current fisheye lens in rearview with a stitched-together panel on the 17" that wraps around somewhat.

The extension cord option The main reason a 240V outlet is needed at a rental is if one uses the EV for back-to-back 240 mile trips on successive days. Otherwise, a 120v supply is enough to top up the tank before the next 240 mile day. In FL I had a very long run to the assigned parking slot...

If they provide an outlet, you still need to monitor SOC via the app to make sure it hasn't been unplugged. Get a phone number for the supervisor.

A personal computer, 12 years before the mid-1970s I am 76, was a physics undergrad at Northwestern when I tried to do a neural network simulation of the retina in 1959 on NU's only computer, an IBM 650. Punched cards and pegboard. It only ran two shifts and so I could get it all night. RAM...

Note that Lane Change will not cross a solid line, only interrupted line striping. Changing into HOV lane is still manual.

My guess is that, for low data density stuff such as commands, even the pager network will suffice. The car will use whatever it can find.

Maybe just a long enough manual steering override to set it to the new lane position for the next 30 sec.

Because of condo delays in installing the 240 V line (which turned out to be 207 v, which drops to 194 v at 40 amps), I got lots of experience with 120 v and extension cords over two years. You can top up about 30 miles worth overnight. If your commute is 40 miles RT, it still works if you can...

Now that you mention it, that Uwajimaya parking lot would be a good choice.

My TACC behavior has changed with recent updates. It maintains speed for too long when approaching stopped traffic, then brakes when only several car lengths to go. Much better behavior back in June-July.

How about a soft wedge? Say, stick-on Velcro, soft side only.

What the Tesla World needs is a slave display on the 17in of what is on the iPhone screen.

The windshield is conductive enough to cage MHz from the car interior (but not GHz). Anyone tried it as the ground plane? de WB7RAY

Probably just the IR drop in the pipe.

Flaky switch. Call Tesla.

DC house wiring AC is great for motors compared to DC. And AC allows for transformers to get the voltage high and thus keep that current low to minimize I^2R heat loss. There are high voltage DC transmission lines (Columbia River to LA; Quebec to Boston, many other shorter runs); doing the...

Article in latest Nature: The Al battery pouch cell is mechanically bendable and foldable (Supplementary Video 1) owing to the flexibility of the electrode and separator materials. Further, we drilled through Al battery pouch cells during battery operation and observed no safety hazard, owing...

The 1g normal is usually countered by support force. It is the change in acceleration that is important here. If there is a real problem, I would suspect the neck pressing backward. The normal S-shape seen in a lateral XR would shift to a C shape (as in bent-over reading) under acceleration...