Just had a trip through Death Valley. On the way out in the dark FSD Beta did not turn on high beam the whole trip. There was car in front of me at least a mile away with barely visible taillight, and completely dark road.
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Auto high beams still comically bad
- Thread starter rubyred
- Start date
Hayseed_MS
Spreader of "Endless Non Sequitur"
If this is the meaning of working well, you may as well remove your high beam. Are you a city only driver?
The auto high beams work very well for me. They were terrible three months ago, and now they are quite good. I won't say perfect or excellent, but good enough to leave them on at all times. It is interesting to see that not everyone agrees, but a quick look through this thread and others shows me that only a small percentage seem to feel that they are still troublesome. I'm not sure whether the vocal minority are having trouble with situations that I don't encounter or whether they are just looking for perfection.
They are not as good as my Mazda CX5. They may not be as good as your Ford, Volvo, Toyota, or whatever. But in my experience they are good enough for everyday use. With that said, I still hope that Tesla will make further improvements.
They are not as good as my Mazda CX5. They may not be as good as your Ford, Volvo, Toyota, or whatever. But in my experience they are good enough for everyday use. With that said, I still hope that Tesla will make further improvements.
The vast majority agree that they have drastically improved one the last couple updates. I don’t turn mine off anymore.
Keep in mind that people don’t go on forums to tell how great everything is usually. They just go about their day. People tend to go to online communities to complain and find who agrees with them.
The negative echo chamber here is real.
Auto high beams are fantastic now. Off at the sight of lights, on within 5 seconds of no cars ahead. It’s even better in places where roads rise and fall because the cameras behind the mirror see the cars coming before your lights hit them. I’ve been impressed lately.
IronCoffee_Max
Member
Just my two cents:
Auto high beams used to be horrible to where I automatically turned it off the moment I turned on AP. In the last couple months, it's now 99% perfect. I've driven it to and from Denver and Bay Area, rural areas here in Colorado, the mountains, etc… and in the vast majority of cases it's been perfect. I have had a couple cases where it's been wrong (intermittent in primarily rural to urban transitions), but having driven a BMW and a Nissan with the same tech, I am finding the Tesla to be better.
I don't ever expect these to be 100% perfect…but it's better than I have been using high beams and definitely on-par with what I've seen elsewhere.
Auto high beams used to be horrible to where I automatically turned it off the moment I turned on AP. In the last couple months, it's now 99% perfect. I've driven it to and from Denver and Bay Area, rural areas here in Colorado, the mountains, etc… and in the vast majority of cases it's been perfect. I have had a couple cases where it's been wrong (intermittent in primarily rural to urban transitions), but having driven a BMW and a Nissan with the same tech, I am finding the Tesla to be better.
I don't ever expect these to be 100% perfect…but it's better than I have been using high beams and definitely on-par with what I've seen elsewhere.
I can echo everyone else here, from Ontario.
Used to be bad enough that I had it on low beam all the time, and when FSD is used, I had to disable it every time FSD was turned on.
Not anymore. It's on 100% of the time, didn't get any flash from oncoming drivers for a long time now, and I feel I'm in an agreement with the auto-beam about 90% of the time, which I think is pretty good. And for the remaining 10%, it's still not bad enough to force a turn off.
I would say it's about the same as my previous car - BMW X3.
Used to be bad enough that I had it on low beam all the time, and when FSD is used, I had to disable it every time FSD was turned on.
Not anymore. It's on 100% of the time, didn't get any flash from oncoming drivers for a long time now, and I feel I'm in an agreement with the auto-beam about 90% of the time, which I think is pretty good. And for the remaining 10%, it's still not bad enough to force a turn off.
I would say it's about the same as my previous car - BMW X3.
Since I got my 2023 Model 3 RWD. The only time I turn off auto-high beams is when it is snowing at night. Because you get the lightspeed blinding effect with the high beams on. In any other situation it is on pretty much all of the time unless in town, because some areas it will flick the high beams on in a city 45-50mph road when no one else is on it but plenty of street lamps.
I got my car beginning of Dec and the high beams (and wipers) were immediately obviously terrible. Wipers went off under every street light and the high beams were embarrassing to have on.
Since the Christmas update I have auto high beams on permanently and it's fine. It doesn't make the exact same decisions I would but it's not reasonable to expect it to.
Wipers are very much improved. I still have the occasional drive when they insist on wiping when they don't need to, but these are pretty rare and by and large I have these on auto the whole time too.
Since the Christmas update I have auto high beams on permanently and it's fine. It doesn't make the exact same decisions I would but it's not reasonable to expect it to.
Wipers are very much improved. I still have the occasional drive when they insist on wiping when they don't need to, but these are pretty rare and by and large I have these on auto the whole time too.
andaconda
Active Member
I'll say that the auto high beams do a better job than I myself can!
legendsk
Member
Indeed! Like some others, I am a little put off by the apparent importance placed on fart noises and light shows, while apparently ignoring what someone called, "doing the worst possible thing at the worst possible time". My auto headlights and rain sensing wipers work as well as, or better than any car I have owned.
And yet so many are having problems with them?
But then I am terrified to pull out of my car port because I have no idea whether today it will allow me to creep out and gently turn onto the street and drive or will it choose to leap out and accelerate to 70 mph as fast as possible in the 10 mph zone? I may be driving in the right hand lane and the nav lady will announce, "In 500 feet, turn right.", which is what I know to be correct and then the car will suddenly try to swerve across 3 lanes of traffic, (while accelerating), to get the in left lane, so that in 500 feet it can turn right across those 3 lanes - or perhaps ignoring the nav lady, turn left and go somewhere entirely off the calculated (correctly), route - or equally likely just continue accelerating and blow through the 4 way stop or red light and go on straight ahead.
And yet most posted experiences are nothing like my driving experiences. LA to NYC without interventions or disengagements? I can NEVER get even out of the subdivision, much less the parking lot, without a scary forced intervention. I would feel better about it all, if I could go one (1) mile on a bright sunny afternoon, on a 2 lane paved road, with no other traffic in sight, at the posted speed limit, without an intervention.
I know people's perceptions are different, but how can there be such a disparity between what I experience and what I see posted? It's like the cars aren't even the same species, much less all Tesla's.
Hi all,
New to the forum and new to Tesla - picked up my Model 3 last week after owing a Hyundai Ioniq Electric and before that a Volt. Loving the car, and still lots to learn, but one thing I'm starting to understand - partly from reading this forum - is that for all the bells and whistles, some things that I expected to Just Work turn out not to be particularly good... auto high beams being one of them...
My drive home involves a long stretch of windy unlit road, and the auto high beams on the Model 3 just seem to switch up and down between high and dip every 30 seconds or so, seemingly at random, with no other cars around. Now I may be a bit old and out of touch with modern ways, but I happen to like to see where I'm going, particularly when driving fast on a windy road in the dark. I found the constant dipping sufficiently distracting that I think I'll just turn them off. Driving the same road over the last year, the Hyundai just worked - stayed on high beam the whole time, dipped when there was an oncoming vehicle or when coming up behind another car. I don't recall ever once thinking it'd done the wrong thing. I'm pretty sure this feature works just as well on my wife's Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV - feels like auto high beams is kind of a solved problem. Hopefully it'll improve with future updates, but I do wonder if it'd be better if Tesla focused its software efforts on its unique Tesla stuff and just licensed these basic functions from someone who'd already got it working...
The other thing that alarmed me on my first night drive was that on this same stretch of road at night the car will start popping up rather alarming alerts saying that multiple cameras aren't able to see because they're obscured or dirty... when in fact the reason they can't see anything is that it's, y'know, dark...
Still, all that said it *is* a pretty cool car
New to the forum and new to Tesla - picked up my Model 3 last week after owing a Hyundai Ioniq Electric and before that a Volt. Loving the car, and still lots to learn, but one thing I'm starting to understand - partly from reading this forum - is that for all the bells and whistles, some things that I expected to Just Work turn out not to be particularly good... auto high beams being one of them...
My drive home involves a long stretch of windy unlit road, and the auto high beams on the Model 3 just seem to switch up and down between high and dip every 30 seconds or so, seemingly at random, with no other cars around. Now I may be a bit old and out of touch with modern ways, but I happen to like to see where I'm going, particularly when driving fast on a windy road in the dark. I found the constant dipping sufficiently distracting that I think I'll just turn them off. Driving the same road over the last year, the Hyundai just worked - stayed on high beam the whole time, dipped when there was an oncoming vehicle or when coming up behind another car. I don't recall ever once thinking it'd done the wrong thing. I'm pretty sure this feature works just as well on my wife's Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV - feels like auto high beams is kind of a solved problem. Hopefully it'll improve with future updates, but I do wonder if it'd be better if Tesla focused its software efforts on its unique Tesla stuff and just licensed these basic functions from someone who'd already got it working...
The other thing that alarmed me on my first night drive was that on this same stretch of road at night the car will start popping up rather alarming alerts saying that multiple cameras aren't able to see because they're obscured or dirty... when in fact the reason they can't see anything is that it's, y'know, dark...
Still, all that said it *is* a pretty cool car
OxBrew
Active Member
Yeah, ignore the camera disabled warnings, almost never mean anything.
The auto lights worked horribly for me for the first year, then they gradually improved to where they are better than me. I grew up driving a dark curvy road home, got pretty damn good at dipping the brights just before seeing oncoming cars. These dip a split second after seeing the cars, which I now prefer, so they know I dipped them, and don't flash me.
I do get false dips for signs still, but about 5% as bad as it was a year ago, very rare.
I wonder if these cars just continue to calibrate things like this? I'm pretty surprised they're not working better for you.
The auto lights worked horribly for me for the first year, then they gradually improved to where they are better than me. I grew up driving a dark curvy road home, got pretty damn good at dipping the brights just before seeing oncoming cars. These dip a split second after seeing the cars, which I now prefer, so they know I dipped them, and don't flash me.
I do get false dips for signs still, but about 5% as bad as it was a year ago, very rare.
I wonder if these cars just continue to calibrate things like this? I'm pretty surprised they're not working better for you.
Thanks for the reply. I definitely get the sense it was reflections from signs and chevrons for sharp bends, etc, that were triggering it to dip a lot of the time. I guess it's possible they can self-calibrate in some way, but I'm not sure how since there's no feedback to the car to know whether it's done the right thing. Anyway, I've turned them off for now and I'll try again in future to see if things improve - it doesn't bother me to do it manually.
Just to follow up yet again, I adjusted my headlights using the procedure in the service manual (the driver's side one was a bit high and to the right) but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have made any difference to the auto high beams. On the country road I regularly drive down in the dark there are posts on the side to mark the edge of the road (I think they're called 'guide posts'). The ones on the left have red reflectors and the ones on the right have white reflectors. I suspect that when it goes on to high beam it may be mistaking these for tail lights on the left or oncoming car headlights on the right. It pretty much constantly cycles between high and dip. Perhaps these kinds of posts aren't a thing in California...
As a fellow motorist in CA where there are a lot of 3's and Y's, there is definitely something wrong with the auto high beam implementation. Large percentage of 3/Y's running with high beams on crowded freeways. I don't know if there's any feedback mechanism to report bugs like this (I'm not a tesla owner myself) but it's dangerous for everyone else out there.
legendsk
Member
I haven't had the occasion to test mine since this last update, but up to now they have always worked great. Perhaps a little too sensitive about switching to low beams because of city lights, rather than traffic. But out on the highway really good about dropping when they should and switching to high any time they reasonably can. My wipers of course, haven't worked right since the last 5 or updates. Dry wipes. Failure to wipe in heavy rain. . . . . .
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