I use it every chance I get, mainly to see what it will do/how it acts. I have noticed it doesn’t hang out in the passing lane forever like it used to, and if someone is on your ass, it tends to move out of the passing lane pretty quick. Some of the merging from on ramp to highway are still sketchy.
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Navigate on Autopilot is Useless (2018.42.3)
- Thread starter wk057
- Start date
I guess if we're bumping this thread, it's still useless for me. I got my HW3 upgrade finally, and as expected AP still has all of the same bad behaviors. NoAP still makes terrible lane choices, and TACC is still not smooth enough.
The car itself is great though.
The car itself is great though.
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
I guess you know that HW3 isn't necessarily supposed to make AP or TACC any better, at least not at this time. Sorry to hear about your experience. I am often puzzled why some people see issues and others (me included) don't have any issues that bother me about TACC and Ap / NoAP. So far I'm really happy with it on my long trips, but sure, I understand some folks aren't so happy with it.
In Norway it's pretty terrible at some locations. Last trip it phantom braked hard for me atleast 6 times on a 30 minute trip. You gotta constantly be ready to throttle out of it.
Also it's terrible at picking lanes. Map data must be very wrong, it constantly "switches lane to reach destination" even though both lanes go the destination, and no change required for 15 km.
Also it tries to switch to faster lane less than 1.5 km from the offramp, even though there's a lot of cars in the right lane so it probably wouldn't be able to merge back in.
Also it's terrible at picking lanes. Map data must be very wrong, it constantly "switches lane to reach destination" even though both lanes go the destination, and no change required for 15 km.
Also it tries to switch to faster lane less than 1.5 km from the offramp, even though there's a lot of cars in the right lane so it probably wouldn't be able to merge back in.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
It is actually not that surprising when you think about it. Tesla is going for an AP that works everywhere. But there are over 4 million miles of roads in the US. That's a lot of different roads with a lot of different driving conditions. Getting the same reliability across 4M miles of roads is going to be tough. It is not surprising that AP might have better behavior in some conditions than others.
It's probably one reason why most companies are aiming for L4 autonomous driving first before going for L5 autonomous. It's a lot easier to get autonomous driving working reliability in one geofenced area first before trying to get autonomous driving that works reliably across millions of miles of different roads and conditions.
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
That's a good thought, but the reason why it surprises me that our car works well for me is that I have recently driven all the way across the USA and back and then regularly drive the 500 mile trips to San Diego and back, and it works fine. Yup, it is not the 4 million miles of road, but enough to have me like it
My neighbor can't even drive the same road from here to the gigafactory without several hiccups 
mtndrew1
Active Member
NoA has had a significant regression for me with 2020.24.6.4.
In my daily use case, the 110 freeway between downtown LA and the South Bay, it’s making all kinds of boneheaded lane change demands that it didn’t before.
For example it incessantly demands that I change lanes all the way to the right and is “attempting to complete maneuver” while I’m in the carpool lane with nowhere to go.
It had been pretty solid until this firmware and then it all went haywire. Not sure what they changed but it’s now useless on my commute.
In my daily use case, the 110 freeway between downtown LA and the South Bay, it’s making all kinds of boneheaded lane change demands that it didn’t before.
For example it incessantly demands that I change lanes all the way to the right and is “attempting to complete maneuver” while I’m in the carpool lane with nowhere to go.
It had been pretty solid until this firmware and then it all went haywire. Not sure what they changed but it’s now useless on my commute.
I wonder how much of NOA's performance depends on settings?. I have the lane change setting set to average, and I typically set my speed to a couple of MPH slower than what I think the average speed on the road is. I've found this generally minimizes the amount of times I need to pass slower cars. I've generally had really good performance with this setup. I like the average setting over Mad Max as it doesn't try to pass cars that are going fractionally slower than you are. I'll occasionally have to deal with slower drivers that subconsciously (or maybe consciously) speed up when you go to pass them by increasing my speed setting by 3 or 4 mph until I get past them and then I lower it back down.
I agree that some lane changes required to follow the route seem unnecessary. I'm kind of curious how that is programmed. Off ramp performance also seems a bit random. There are still a few interchanges near me where the car will go full highway speed into the start of the curve on a ramp instead of slowing down. It will actually make the corner and slow down, but it's definitely aggressive and sketchy. On other ramps it properly slows down before entering the curve. I wonder if that behavior is related to map data.
I recently did a 100 mile highway drive without any issues and I only disengaged(manually) to go through a section of new pavement without any lane markings. Overall I've been impressed lately. Granted I haven't been commuting so none of my recent driving has been in heavy rush hour traffic. Some has been moderate weekend vacation traffic, so not all wide open roads.
I agree that some lane changes required to follow the route seem unnecessary. I'm kind of curious how that is programmed. Off ramp performance also seems a bit random. There are still a few interchanges near me where the car will go full highway speed into the start of the curve on a ramp instead of slowing down. It will actually make the corner and slow down, but it's definitely aggressive and sketchy. On other ramps it properly slows down before entering the curve. I wonder if that behavior is related to map data.
I recently did a 100 mile highway drive without any issues and I only disengaged(manually) to go through a section of new pavement without any lane markings. Overall I've been impressed lately. Granted I haven't been commuting so none of my recent driving has been in heavy rush hour traffic. Some has been moderate weekend vacation traffic, so not all wide open roads.
I have been driving quite a bit with NOA today. It got me thinking. The thing that some people hate it has probably nothing to do with the system. I think the driver needs a learning curve. It takes some time of getting used to it and let the system do its thing without questioning every move it makes. See it your girlfriend driving or someone else. You can either sit there and "driving with them" or just relax and let the driver do its thing. So with NOA. Learn to trust the system, it's safe!
DDotJ
Member
That's what I thought too, I realized that it was something I would have to get used to relinquishing guidance and control to a computer. Although the 'HOV Enabled' setting is terrible on my commute so I disabled it and let it do it's thing. It was much better with the HOV setting off but I still had a lot of issues, especially it getting in the far right lane way too early. Which would have been acceptable but the vehicle had trouble with vehicles merging onto the freeway. It would not slow down to let vehicles in, or slam the brakes at the last second trying to get behind the merging car.
I do disagree with the part about trusting the system because it is safe. I've had multiple instances of the vehicle trying to lane change into a barrier, and a few times it attempted to change into a lane at the same time another vesicle was trying to switch into the same lane. It is a capable driver assist feature, but I wouldn't trust it to make safe maneuvers. I always check mirrors and blind spots even with unconfirmed lane changes enabled.
Strange, I do agree that it goes to the far right lane very early, but I was alway impressed how the system would let other drivers merge on the freeway gradually.
Once I had the system off and I was trying to merge from the left lane to the middle lane while another car behind me was trying to merge from the right lane into the same lane. I did not see that and the system immediately intervened. The system took over totally and avoided a collision. I was really impressed.
DDotJ
Member
I see, to be fair the merges I have trouble with are usually short in length. Human drivers see the merging vehicle and slow down in advance. I've noticed NoA generally maintains full speed until the vehicle has already cut into the lane. But I've also seen merge points where the vehicle slows down before a merge too. Maybe it could be a maps issue, but I can only speculate.
Fair point, I've definitely had side collision avoidance save me. I was merging onto the freeway and some street racer fool was weaving through traffic at 90 -100 MPH. I checked my mirrors and blind spots, then initiated a lane change and began the maneuver but the car suddenly jerked the wheel and alerted me. Right then the car blew past me, if it had not been for that intervention I would have definitely been in an accident that night.
But on the flip side of the coin, I've had NoA merge into lanes at the same time as other cars in broad daylight and I would have to intervene to abort the maneuver. Maybe if I had not intervened the car may have aborted the lane change by itself, but I definitely didn't want to risk it. Also I still have a fair number of false positives that result in lane change aborts too when there is no vehicle entering the target lane.
I think that NoA isn't reliable in this aspect, when it does detect a lane incursion it does a fantastic job of avoiding a collision with great reaction speed. But it's not at the point where it is consistent enough to trust the system to always detect scenarios like this. Which is why I always double check whenever NoA is doing lane change maneuvers.
clydeiii
Member
It's because the car makes DIFFERENT choices than what Dr. Dabbles would make. So to him, those choices are useless. To me, they are great. I just have (I guess?) trash driving habits while Dr.Dab is a good driver.
GlmnAlyAirCar
Active Member
clydeiii
Member
It might sound ridiculous when framed like that but it's definitely true. If you don't like the choices the car makes, you won't use it and therefore it's useless. If you really want to go 10 over on city streets but the car refuses, it is the very definition of useless, to you. If you don't mind going the speed limit, maybe the feature has value to you. The car could go 10 over, but it chooses not to, for one reason or another.
More broadly, I mostly hear people complain about how others drive and never about how bad of a driver they are. I attribute this to mostly just disagreeing with the choices other drivers make.
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
really good summary and yup, totally agree. Maybe some folks were thinking you meant it is totally worthless to everyone
But yea, good point. The car is not driving quite the same as I do, but close enough that I like it. Let's just hope it continues to improve.Might I please request you submit a "Bug Report" every time this event occurs?
I have noted improvements in my neck of the woods after submitting these so perhaps they help the AI team at Tesla with real world failures, or it's just dumb luck. Either way, it helps to have those data points submitted as I don't know if Tesla knows of the failures otherwise.
clydeiii
Member
The car is making hundreds, maybe even thousands of decisions (or not making them) per drive. The question for any given driver is, how many of those decisions do you agree with? For me, on the highway, the answer as best as I can estimate, is about 80% of the decision seem fine to me. If I disagree strongly with any given decision, the car makes it quite easy for me to take over and make a more preferred decision instead, which I do on occasion. Other times, the car makes a decision I strongly disagree with, but I'll simply give it side eye and let it do its thing, in the spirit of trying to understand where the car is coming from and the hopes that one day it will learn to make better decisions. On the third hand, sometimes even a broken clock is right, and it's hard to know if the car is making correct decisions or simply getting lucky.
And finally sometimes the decisions it makes are clearly bugs. Phantom breaking is clearly a bug, for some definition of bug. Given a set of input from the various sensors, it thinks it might be about to run into something so it breaks. That calculation is simply incorrect, obviously. If you refuse to use FSD or AP due to phantom breaking, I totally understand, as it can easily cause major anxiety and might also upset the people tailgating you (though shame on them for making such bad decisions). I personally experience very few phantom breaking events in my daily commute but if you consistently get them, I don't blame you at all for thinking the feature is useless.
And finally sometimes the decisions it makes are clearly bugs. Phantom breaking is clearly a bug, for some definition of bug. Given a set of input from the various sensors, it thinks it might be about to run into something so it breaks. That calculation is simply incorrect, obviously. If you refuse to use FSD or AP due to phantom breaking, I totally understand, as it can easily cause major anxiety and might also upset the people tailgating you (though shame on them for making such bad decisions). I personally experience very few phantom breaking events in my daily commute but if you consistently get them, I don't blame you at all for thinking the feature is useless.
I've had my MX since last October and truthfully if I'd have known how FSD would perform I would never have spent the $6K on it.
It's supposed to make driving more relaxing by taking away some of the stress from the driver; I have found the opposite. What with random braking, wanting to change lanes for no apparent reason, 'TAKE THE WHEEL NOW!!!, IMMEDIATELY, YOU'RE GONNA DIE!!", or such messages for no reason when cruising on a clear freeway at 65 MPH, (exaggerated, but you get what I mean, I've almost soiled myself a couple of times), it's way more stressful than than normal driving.
My wife won't use FSD at all, it scares her so much.
Such a disappointment.
It's supposed to make driving more relaxing by taking away some of the stress from the driver; I have found the opposite. What with random braking, wanting to change lanes for no apparent reason, 'TAKE THE WHEEL NOW!!!, IMMEDIATELY, YOU'RE GONNA DIE!!", or such messages for no reason when cruising on a clear freeway at 65 MPH, (exaggerated, but you get what I mean, I've almost soiled myself a couple of times), it's way more stressful than than normal driving.
My wife won't use FSD at all, it scares her so much.
Such a disappointment.
