2018 S100D AP "Smooth as Silk"? NOT!

[Boatguy]

For almost three years I drove an S90D. It had the original AP with the MobilEye hardware and software. We did a number of long trips in the car (> 1,000 miles) and the AP was very good. Not perfect, but very good and very smooth on the freeway.

A year later in the spring of 2017 Elon touted the new Tesla proprietary AP as "smooth as silk" and I felt kind of jealous with my "old" 2016 S90D.

Last December Tesla rang and offered me a demonstrator S100D. Same color, sunroof, wheels, interior and monthly payment and they would forget the fees and remaining payments on my current lease. Hey, why not? They were trying to convert inventory to cash and it worked for me.

So now I'm driving a 2018 S100D with the "enhanced" autopilot which as far as I can tell means 5 cameras, plus radar and the ultrasonic sensors. The AP is NOT "silky smooth"!

Cruise control is set to "4" and "avoid frontal collisions" is set to "medium".

- The cruise control "surges" when following traffic, about as badly as my BMW i3; which is pretty bad! It over compensates, slowing down too much, then accelerating too hard, slowing down too much; repeat until annoyed and switch to manual.

- The car abruptly slows if a car in an adjacent lane comes anywhere near the lane line; just the usual sort of slight wander that is unfortunately common on California freeways. Then the AP thinks about it for a second, concludes the car isn't coming into my lane and accelerates.

- When changing lanes to pass it will absolutely not accelerate until the lane change is completed and there is no traffic ahead.

- The AP tends to float to the outside of the turn on the freeway before pulling itself back to the middle.

- Today, taking a sweeping right hand turn at 70mph, which was bounded by a 4' cement median well away from the left side of the lane, the car abruptly slowed and accelerated four times, like it was treating the corner as a series of straight lines. Literally four years ago my wife was in the car on a test drive going around this corner at 75 on AP and it was very smooth, eventually leading us to buy the 2016.

So do I have a lemon? Do my cameras need adjustment? Is the Tesla AP, with more cameras and a faster processor, simply worse than the Mobileye AP?

 

[conman]

Nah, that's just the state of autopilot at the moment. It's no lemon, you just rightfully don't like behaviour of autopilot. To be fair there was one release last year that actually was close to smooth as silk, but since moving to version 9 based autopilot which tries to do a lot more, all the woven silk has returned back to its rough raw state. It looks like every time a new feature is added to autopilot the smoothness regresses further and then it takes ages to recover the smoothness.

 

[headcase]

I own AP1 and AP2 cars running latest software. I agree that AP1 is still a better experience overall. Will be interesting to see if 2019 is the year that AP2 software finally excels AP1 or not (not features, but in performance).

 

[conman]

I own AP1 and AP2 cars running latest software. I agree that AP1 is still a better experience overall. Will be interesting to see if 2019 is the year that AP2 software finally excels AP1 or not (not features, but in performance).

I think it will get crappier and crappier as more and more FSD features get tacked on. Only once all the features have been rolled out will further releases improve on the smoothness. See some previous discussion about it here:
Phantom braking will get a lot worse before it gets better

 

[headcase]

Agreed.

 

[Boatguy]

Well that's disappointing, but "phantom braking" is a good description of what it's doing. Two years after the release of their own AP s/w, and with five cameras, Tesla still can't match the performance of Mobileye with one camera? I guess the constant turmoil and turnover at Tesla just doesn't lend itself to quality software development. It seems like now all the real software development is going into the M3; MS/X owners get video games and electronic fireplaces.

I have to say the purchase experience was also a nightmare. It took two and a half months of phone calls and emails to get the leases straightened out and the car actually configured to what I purchased.

Tesla does a lot of things very well, but unfortunately the company reflects the chaotic and impulsive nature of the CEO. Some of that is understandable in a startup, but Tesla is no longer a startup, it's now just a poorly run company getting by because there is no real competition. I'm on a 3yr lease and cautiously optimistic that the German's will have some viable alternatives for me in 2021.

Until then I guess the AP will be reserved for freeway driving with light traffic. But I do enjoy the additional range, so the switch to the 100D is not all bad.

 

[conman]

Well that's disappointing, but "phantom braking" is a good description of what it's doing. Two years after the release of their own AP s/w, and with five cameras, Tesla still can't match the performance of Mobileye with one camera? I guess the constant turmoil and turnover at Tesla just doesn't lend itself to quality software development. It seems like now all the real software development is going into the M3; MS/X owners get video games and electronic fireplaces.

It's actually all 8 cameras, and to be honest, I can understand why it gets worse every time they move along in the code base and add features. AP1 is smooth as silk because it hasn't tried to do anything more than when it first came out. If you redesign with a whole lot more inputs and add features, you are basically starting from scratch. I don't think this will be a permanent problem but I also don't expect it to start getting smoother till next year.