I went out yesterday to put the new version of auto steer to the ultimate test. Namely the Sea-to-Sky highway at a rather high speed.
For those who don't know the Sea-to-Sky highway is a stretch of road that takes you from Vancouver to Whistler. Especially the stretch between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish is very pretty but extremely curvy. I have done this trench previously with older versions of auto steer but I found it too dangerous. I only used cruise control in stead. I did it yesterday, ending at the supercharger in Squamish.
I wish I could make a movie of of findings but I don't have these fancy stand alone cameras. So here is just written account.
Overall I was impressed but on this piece of road it was not without flaws.
The road is alternating between a divided four lane road and an undivided road. I found out that — as soon as the road changed from a divided road to an undivided road the "speed is restricted to 70 km/h in auto steer" sign came on. This even when the speed limit was higher. When the road entered into a divided part again the car resumed to its original speed without the restriction sign. I have not seen that in previous versions before.
The reducing of speed for a sharp curve is not yet very well sorted out. It starts to reduce speed when already taking the curve in stead of slightly before. This makes the drive a little nauseous. So the GPS integrations could be better.
Sometimes it came a little to close to the divider for my comfort and I had to take over.
On some stretches when there were a high number of curves following each other the "hold steering wheel" came on almost immediately as if the computer was overloaded.
Other than the above it handled the stretch extremely well. I was impresses and I really put it to the test as the drive was quite fast for this road (I set the cruise control at 110km/h or 115 km/h which is 68m/h to 72 m/h). If I really kept to the speed limit (most of the times 90 km/h which is 55 m/h) I think the above negatives would not have happened. I might try that one of these days.
For those who don't know the Sea-to-Sky highway is a stretch of road that takes you from Vancouver to Whistler. Especially the stretch between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish is very pretty but extremely curvy. I have done this trench previously with older versions of auto steer but I found it too dangerous. I only used cruise control in stead. I did it yesterday, ending at the supercharger in Squamish.
I wish I could make a movie of of findings but I don't have these fancy stand alone cameras. So here is just written account.
Overall I was impressed but on this piece of road it was not without flaws.
The road is alternating between a divided four lane road and an undivided road. I found out that — as soon as the road changed from a divided road to an undivided road the "speed is restricted to 70 km/h in auto steer" sign came on. This even when the speed limit was higher. When the road entered into a divided part again the car resumed to its original speed without the restriction sign. I have not seen that in previous versions before.
The reducing of speed for a sharp curve is not yet very well sorted out. It starts to reduce speed when already taking the curve in stead of slightly before. This makes the drive a little nauseous. So the GPS integrations could be better.
Sometimes it came a little to close to the divider for my comfort and I had to take over.
On some stretches when there were a high number of curves following each other the "hold steering wheel" came on almost immediately as if the computer was overloaded.
Other than the above it handled the stretch extremely well. I was impresses and I really put it to the test as the drive was quite fast for this road (I set the cruise control at 110km/h or 115 km/h which is 68m/h to 72 m/h). If I really kept to the speed limit (most of the times 90 km/h which is 55 m/h) I think the above negatives would not have happened. I might try that one of these days.