Anyone else having trouble with Traffic-Aware Cruise Control?

[Dewg]

What do you know. Even before owning a Tesla, I made sure my commute does not get that sun in the eye situation. Traffic is terrible on those roads especially rush hours due to the making everyone blind. So fortunately because of my past decisions, I have yet to experience that situation on my Tesla.

I'm in the suburbs in SoCal, so traffic is nearly constant. I've definitely had drives with no lead car on freeways, but it's pretty rare. As for the sun, I've had a few drives, coming into OC from Ontario (on 91-W) in the late afternoon when the sun is right in my eyes. I was impressed that AP could see the lane lines while I couldn't see them at all - totally washed out by the low direct sunlight.

The problem I had was that as a safety driver, I'm supposed to monitor the vehicle and take over - but in this case I couldn't see the lanes, so I totally trusted the Tesla to do the driving, and it worked very well.

 

[nzvlnr]

Hello; I have a 22 teslsa S with maybe 400 miles on it. I engage auto pilot ( I did not get the FSD) and it works for about 3 to 5 minutes and then flashes to grab the wheel and deactivates. I then get a message ( when i try to activate the feature) that states it will not activate for the remainder of the current trip. It did that both times that I used the autopilot. It was a nice sunny day with light traffic.

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[KArnold]

Has anyone else experienced this?

Everyone. You may want to read the owner's manual.

 

[OxBrew]

Hello; I have a 22 teslsa S with maybe 400 miles on it. I engage auto pilot ( I did not get the FSD) and it works for about 3 to 5 minutes and then flashes to grab the wheel and deactivates. I then get a message ( when i try to activate the feature) that states it will not activate for the remainder of the current trip. It did that both times that I used the autopilot. It was a nice sunny day with light traffic.

Has anyone else experienced this?

You need to hold the wheel and apply a bit of force now and then to tell the car you are still awake and paying attention. Also, look at the road just like you are driving. You have to be ready to take over at any second.

 

[nzvlnr]

You need to hold the wheel and apply a bit of force now and then to tell the car you are still awake and paying attention. Also, look at the road just like you are driving. You have to be ready to take over at any second.

I thought I was? Maybe not enough, is this why it will not let me activate auto pilot again? Maybe the calibration needs to be set? Or is this clearly as you state I am not being active enough on the activation of autopilot? Just settling in on the new car.
Thank you for the response with useful information!! Much appreciated...

 

[OxBrew]

I thought I was? Maybe not enough, is this why it will not let me activate auto pilot again? Maybe the calibration needs to be set? Or is this clearly as you state I am not being active enough on the activation of autopilot? Just settling in on the new car.
Thank you for the response with useful information!! Much appreciated...

Once it kicks you out of AP, you need to stop and put it in P to make it active again.

You will get several warnings before it kicks you out, don't ignore them. Move the wheel gently a bit each time.

 

[enemji]

Hello; I have a 22 teslsa S with maybe 400 miles on it. I engage auto pilot ( I did not get the FSD) and it works for about 3 to 5 minutes and then flashes to grab the wheel and deactivates. I then get a message ( when i try to activate the feature) that states it will not activate for the remainder of the current trip. It did that both times that I used the autopilot. It was a nice sunny day with light traffic.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Autopilot is not hands free steering

 

[OxBrew]

You need to hold the wheel and apply a bit of force now and then to tell the car you are still awake and paying attention. Also, look at the road just like you are driving. You have to be ready to take over at any second.

Clarification: You need to hold the wheel all the time and apply a bit of force now and then (also almost all the time)...

 

[primedive]

If it wasn’t for the phantom braking and sudden speed limit changes, auto steer and tacc would be stress reducers. Now I’m always worried about where it’s going to spazz out this time. I do find the events happen a lot less often once you get out of the city, but when they do they still freak the crap out of everyone.

A dumb cruise mode would definitely be nice.

 

[Mikecm1]

If it wasn’t for the phantom braking and sudden speed limit changes, auto steer and tacc would be stress reducers. Now I’m always worried about where it’s going to spazz out this time. I do find the events happen a lot less often once you get out of the city, but when they do they still freak the crap out of everyone.

A dumb cruise mode would definitely be nice.

Or if Tesla wouldn’t have removed radar and disabled it for everyone who has one. Yeah, beating a dead horse, but I can’t help but hold a serious grudge.

 

[surfnbikeY]

This just goes to show how Tesla is losing the faith and confidence of previously staunch believers. They are acting in ways that hurt the customer relationship. They’ve got to care more about the customer experience than cost cutting or any other internal-facing issue alone. Do right by the customer, do not make things worse for them in the name of progress for science or supply chain efficiency or any other BS. Without a happy customer base that feels confident in your products, you will easily get to a point where you do not need to worry about any of the production problems as every day will be a bad day at that time.

This sums up exactly how I feel. I am a long-time investor, original Model 3 owner from 2018 (I waited in line in 2016 to put down my reservation), and was a huge Tesla advocate, showing everyone my Model 3 (and now Y), but after the Traffic Aware Cruise Control issues that I experienced (nearly being rear ended at high speed with my three kids in the back seat due to phantom braking) my position has completely been reversed. I wish that they would permit us to have dumb cruise control like in every other vehicle I have ever owned.

Saving $150 per vehicle by deleting radar and the ultrasonic sensors was a huge mistake in my opinion.

 

[eli_]

The older AP stack with radar didn't phantom brake as much but also it would run into stopped fire trucks because they would filter out zero-velocity radar returns as noise. (A can of coke and a city bus look the same from radar's point of view). So now vision can theoretically brake for stopped vehicles and the fire trucks can escape unscathed when the driver isn't paying attention. But now you've added this new source of false positives that can cause slowdown/braking because some stopped vehicle is momentarily predicted that isn't there. This is especially hard with oncoming cars and high curvature. There's other sources too like the cut-in detection that wasn't there back in 2018.

Personally I'd rather it just have the old model where it could potentially run into fire trucks but also phantom brake less, because anyone who is even semi-paying attention can avoid running into stopped cars and cancel the system. But phantom braking will always catch you off-guard because there is no warning.

 

[LadyOnikara]

I never put on any cruise control unless there is fast cars in front of me or I'm on a two-lane road. (I drive an ICE GMC at times and it doesn't pay attention to the traffic around it, so it's habit.) Using stuff like Autosteer is just outside my realm of experience and I have not tried it yet. Yeah, I'm old school, but it helps to have both the car AND me paying attention with the way people drive around here.

 

[drtjstone]

Thanks for the input — you might be right about being overly cautious. Do you find Autosteer provides relief for the arms similar to cruise control for the legs?

Yes I do - esp. on long motorway drives - I find it really helpful then. And I'm also fed up with phantom braking (which, to be fair, has definitely improved of late).

 

[GeorgiBoy70]

I'm currently driving across Canada in light winter conditions and have had to fight with cruise control a lot more than I'd like.

When you activate cruise control you are also engaging Autopilot even if you don't have the Full Self Driving package. And because Autopilot depends on the car's cameras, the wipers are necessarily under the car's control. So what happens if your windshield is smeared with gunk from other vehicles? What happens is your wipers go hyperactive and cannot be stopped or slowed unless you disengage cruise control (Autopilot). You can blast wiper fluid, sure, but that only goes so far when there's a stream of oncoming trucks and the smears are sticky. At every stop I've wiped down the forward cameras but it isn't long before the windshield is smeared again and the wipers invoke Apeshit Mode.

Secondly, there's the well documented phantom braking issue. In my case I'm not comfortable using cruise control if there's anyone behind me because the car may suddenly panic brake. So this is a second instance where I often feel compelled to disengage cruise control/Autopilot.

I love my Model Y, don't be me wrong, but driving 4400 km would be a lot less painful with properly functional (and safe!) cruise control. It's a little shameful that a car costing $80,000 CAD can't handle basic cruise control when other, cheaper vehicles do it without skipping a beat. A simple solution would be to offer old-fashioned dumb cruise control where you set an adjustable speed and the system doesn't depend on camera visibility and a capricious neural net to get the job done. Or, perhaps — just maybe — removing radar has had some predictable consequences?

Bottom line: If the car can't handle basic cruise control, how can anyone expect the vehicle to drive itself safely anytime soon?

Same frustrations. It’s made me literally hate my Model 3 because the problem has absolutely gotten worse over time. When I set Adaptive Cruise Control I do it to maintain a proper distance from the car I front of me. I don’t need or want the car slowing down because it thinks I should corner more slowly; especially when it’s just flat-out wrong more than half the time!

Tesla’s ACC is the worst I’ve used. And their auto-wipers are just as bad (flopping back and forth at full speed when it’s drizzling and not even engaging when it’s pouring!).

How do you pay extra for FSD capabilities and then execute on the basics worse than a Mitsubishi??

 

[Oparide]

There should b

Same frustrations. It’s made me literally hate my Model 3 because the problem has absolutely gotten worse over time. When I set Adaptive Cruise Control I do it to maintain a proper distance from the car I front of me. I don’t need or want the car slowing down because it thinks I should corner more slowly; especially when it’s just flat-out wrong more than half the time!

Tesla’s ACC is the worst I’ve used. And their auto-wipers are just as bad (flopping back and forth at full speed when it’s drizzling and not even engaging when it’s pouring!).

How do you pay extra for FSD capabilities and then execute on the basics worse than a Mitsubishi??

There should be an option to use plain old dumb cruise for when basic Tesla cruise is freaking out…

 

[GeorgiBoy70]

There should b

There should be an option to use plain old dumb cruise for when basic Tesla cruise is freaking out…