Comments on: The Autonomous Car: A Hands-Free Drive with Tesla’s HW2

By: James

James — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 16:43:48 +0000

While the software will improve over time, no one ever thinks about the roads. There are millions of traffic engineering problems on the roads today, and no amount of software is going to compensate for the problems on the ground. Just think about those traffic lights… you know the ones, you’re driving along and the light turns yellow. Now what? Do you floor it and try to beat the light, or slam on the brakes and skid to a halt in the middle of the intersection? Software can’t make that decision any better than you, because the light (and the traffic engineering behind it) is the problem, not the driver (human or otherwise).

[WM: Very good points, James. Have to say that yesterday’s 17.7.2 firmware from Tesla was a dramatic improvement on secondary roads. Still far from perfect, but we’re making progress.]

By: ward

ward — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 15:04:51 +0000

Dangerous is probably the right word, and our note to Tesla made that clear. Funny story… Driving home from dinner Saturday night, I found a new road where AutoPilot supposedly worked. When I enabled it, the car zigged and zagged all over the place without any regard for vehicles in adjacent lanes. My wife was screaming that I had better turn it off before the cops saw what was going on and pulled me over for drunk driving. I wasn’t, by the way. Not so sure about the Tesla, but I didn’t want to have to explain all of that to a police officer.

By: dziny

dziny — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 14:37:00 +0000

Sounds like you are beta testing it for tesla risking your life while doing that….. What you have described sounds outright dangerous. I think I’ll pass on self-driving car for a couple of years at least after reading this.

By: NerdUno

NerdUno — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 14:22:52 +0000

We just sent the following note to Tesla, but wanted to alert others to some of the problems we have experienced with AP2…

We have 17.3.2 and have used AutoSteer extensively on a number of interstate highways since its initial release. Primitive would be an understatement. Here’s what we have encountered. On a straight road with no cars, AP2 appears to work satisfactorily at 45 MPH. On a road which curves leaving the vehicle driving into the sun even with human-readable lane markings that remain easy to decipher with the naked eye, the car is worse than dangerous. The car immediately zig zags from lane to lane with no realization that vehicles may be in the other lanes, even beside the car. On highways with exit ramps, AP2 always follows the exit ramp if you are in the right lane even without a right turn signal and even with clearly marked dotted lines on left side of the lane and even if following a vehicle proceeding straight ahead. AP2 still slams on the brakes when approaching almost any (stationary) overhead sign on an interstate.

We appreciate that AP1 code needed tweaking for the new hardware, but AP2 really leaves the impression that the developers started over… and have not progressed even to the level of what most would consider safe driving. There really should be more warnings and alerts regarding documented problems for those that are expecting a safer driving experience. A traffic fatality would be a huge setback for Tesla, not to mention the poor driver.