Autonomous Driving platforms

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4nursebee
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Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by 4nursebee »

One of the recent TSLA topics diverged (go figure) into an increasing amount of discussion pertaining to its FSD services. In a changing world, it seems like as consumers we need a place to discuss the OEM offerings of things similar to TSLA FSD or autopilot. My hope is to have a forum to discuss this kind of thing as a consumer service, evaluate its worth compare to the price. There are TSLA specific forums with a lot of discussion of such, the hope here is to keep track of not just one company, but the offerings from ALL auto companies.

My impression is that many people share opinions that are not formed from experience, rather from the press. So, for fair disclosure, please disclose your actual experience in a vehicle compared along with other things that might inform your opinion. Unexperienced opinions welcome, just disclose as such.

Think of this as discussing a feature of a product, much like debating the utility of buying a self cleaning oven vs one without the feature.

Please do not let this diverge into a Musk antics discussion, TSLA as an investment discussion. Keep the focus on the product. Thank you.

I'd really like to here from anyone that lives in an area that as other services such as Waymo. What about other companies?

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My disclosure: Former Subaru Eyesight owner, current model 3 owner, have all the bells and whistles. I've drunk the KoolAid as an investor also (not to talk about it, but to throw some color onto what I might say).

Our first experience with anything assisting us driving was in a Subaru with eyesight. I think this had distance tracking cruise control, and some form of lane keeping. The lane keeping would be safe if one were distracted, not a driverless kind of thing as it would bounce back and forth. The features were great, worth it for a price I recall as being 2K over base. After using it, I would not go back to a vehicle without it.

Aware of TSLA tech, we rented a model 3 on Turo for a week. It was SCARY! Loud alarms getting near oversize trucks, phantom braking in the shadows of overpasses. Feature wise it basically had ability to drive on a highway, keeping lanes, advising of suggested lane changes, and distance pacing cruise control. After a week, the fear factor was still present, but the triggers were learned, expected, and handled. The driving kind of had a personality. When the week was up, we developed a sense that in our lifetimes we will go to sleep in a car. Our confidence had grown.

When we ordered our model 3, we paid what I recall is $7K for FSD. It was not available to us, but we did get to use the highway autopilot. We made some long trips, felt more relaxed at our destinations. No fender benders from using it on highways. The car offered the chance to auto lane change without warning, I always set it to make me confirm by tapping the turn signal. But the car did the work.

We were able to participate in some early summoning trials. On a stone driveway it has a tough time knowing where to go, once tapped a mailbox post. I kept this on video but never shared. But on a rainy day at a grocery store, it came and picked us up at the entrance without issue.

Late 2021 there was a lot more discussion online about FSD beta rolling out. We updated the app on our phone, followed our driving score a little. Then, when it became apparent that those with good scores got the FSD, we really tried to improve our driving to get a good score. The factors that they judged you on made sense, recall that I was dinged on safe following distance and hard braking. I did some rides focusing on improvements, got my score up to 97. 98 was needed.

Christmas day there were some software updates available. Staying at home, not at a dealer, the updates were uploaded, and BINGO, we had a new Xmas gift!

Here is what I have noted:
1. Distracted driving not tolerated. They must have turned on the interior camera. If I want to play on the phone, it wants to warn me visually and audibly.
2. The car demands more regular attention than former highway use autopilot. Mainly because of #3.
3. Highway use AP would turn off if the driver was not paying attention enough, then not work until the next ride. TSLA will remove FSD availability if this happens 5 times. So, if you want to be a lazy slouch, go to sleep, play on your phone, whatever, you will not have access to FSD for long.
4. The car is really cautious. At times annoyingly so (slow).
5. Left turns across traffic sometimes require input to continue. I'm not sure if software fixes will get this or if more forward lateral cameras needed.
6. It avoids obstructions well.

My impression is that these are safety features we will all want other drivers to have. No more cars hitting bikes or pedestrians. No more texters being distracted. No more bob and weave driving.

I've ordered a cybertruck with FSD. If it will not be available this year, we will likely order a Y and trade in our 3. We will gladly pay $12K for FSD. I think it is a priceless service as is.

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What is your experience?
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z0r
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by z0r »

my experience is driving 2-300k miles by hand over a lifetime. If I think back, truly dangerous and weird things have only happened once every 100k miles or so. I'm talking things so weird that they'd cause many people to crash and then blame some external factor, when in fact the crash could have been prevented by taking more care and being more diligent. "he came out of nowhere!" type stuff, when in fact a careful scan would have seen the problem

"One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." - sully

so when I get early user reports on these systems, especially autopilot-type ones that somewhat encourage ceding immediate mental engagement, and the reports are something like "I've driven 5k miles on it and it's great!" that's actually what I expect. I expect the vast majority of driving to be uninteresting, just like my lifetime of experience has been. What I want to know about are the once-in-100k miles events and I don't think many people are able to really give that evaluation yet, it could take 10+ years

btw musk is a serial liar, in this specific area
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4nursebee
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by 4nursebee »

z0r wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:47 pm my experience is driving 2-300k miles by hand over a lifetime. If I think back, truly dangerous and weird things have only happened once every 100k miles or so. I'm talking things so weird that they'd cause many people to crash and then blame some external factor, when in fact the crash could have been prevented by taking more care and being more diligent. "he came out of nowhere!" type stuff, when in fact a careful scan would have seen the problem

"One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." - sully

so when I get early user reports on these systems, especially autopilot-type ones that somewhat encourage ceding immediate mental engagement, and the reports are something like "I've driven 5k miles on it and it's great!" that's actually what I expect. I expect the vast majority of driving to be uninteresting, just like my lifetime of experience has been. What I want to know about are the once-in-100k miles events and I don't think many people are able to really give that evaluation yet, it could take 10+ years

btw musk is a serial liar, in this specific area
Thanks for sharing.

My previous employment was as a trauma RN, and I saw many many examples of what happens on the roads. While I think the base rate of such accidents is low, everyone of them cost much more than $12K in medical care.

Interesting to compare this to a lifetime of driving and safety. I rear ended someone as a young person, everything was okay other than the cars. Yes, if I was more careful that would not have happened. But, a vehicle equipped with modern safety features would not have rear ended the vehicle.

Being a safe driver on an individual basis has not prevented the universal acceptance of other safety features such as airbags and seatbelts.

Other accidents in my life were because of icy road conditions. Recent weather gave some experience with this, the car was wholly unsatisfactory when unable to see the lines or visual break from road to side of road. Thus, no safety features were used in snow. This on a day when 95% or better of drivers stayed home.
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harikaried
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by harikaried »

4nursebee wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:36 pmFormer Subaru Eyesight owner, current model 3 owner
Ha, that's the same as us. We had a 2014 Forester, and the very first time I used Eyesight, it kept accelerating towards a vehicle stopped at a red light so much so that the lead vehicle inched forwards as I slammed on the brakes with the other driver doing a "WTF" wave. Maybe that was good practice for testing out Tesla's FSD Beta now.
impatientInv
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by impatientInv »

z0r wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:47 pm my experience is driving 2-300k miles by hand over a lifetime. If I think back, truly dangerous and weird things have only happened once every 100k miles or so. I'm talking things so weird that they'd cause many people to crash and then blame some external factor, when in fact the crash could have been prevented by taking more care and being more diligent. "he came out of nowhere!" type stuff, when in fact a careful scan would have seen the problem

"One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." - sully

so when I get early user reports on these systems, especially autopilot-type ones that somewhat encourage ceding immediate mental engagement, and the reports are something like "I've driven 5k miles on it and it's great!" that's actually what I expect. I expect the vast majority of driving to be uninteresting, just like my lifetime of experience has been. What I want to know about are the once-in-100k miles events and I don't think many people are able to really give that evaluation yet, it could take 10+ years

btw musk is a serial liar, in this specific area
Here is him promising fully automated self driving “next year” every year since 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7oZ-AQszEI

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I'm extremely confident that by the end of next year Elon Musk will state that they'll achieve level 4 autonomy by the end of next year.
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cchrissyy
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by cchrissyy »

I have a Y which I have never used FSD or autosteer or anything like that. I am not the slightest bit interested in trying it, because I don't want to put my life on the line, or anyone else's! I wouldn't be willing to pay for the feature at any price until much more time goes by.

My screen display is set on FSD preview, and we notice how consistently wrong it is about displaying the signs and vehicles around us. For example just this afternoon i drove home and while stopped at a red light in a merging lane, so the people next to me were green and i was red, for at least a whole minute, the screen reported my stoplight as blank, and their light as yellow. I think the angle of the sun messed it up. but i thought to myself, damn, good thing I'm here to know i've got a red light and the other people are on green.

My car does sometimes panic and apply emergency alerts about braking or steering to keep me from an imagined danger. usually it is related to cars parked along a winding road in my neighborhood, and we are going along just fine at gentle speeds, but the car imagines i won't turn and will hit them.

edit to add- i do really like the car! it's probably the favorite i've ever had and i would buy another one. If i could improve one thing about it, it would be range, not FSD.
Last edited by cchrissyy on Wed Jan 26, 2022 8:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Normchad
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by Normchad »

Current Tesla Model 3 owner for 2 years. I just have the standard Auto-Pilot, not FSD. Honestly though, FSD currently doesn’t do that much more than AP.

I love it. It’s an absolute marvel. But it isn’t autonomous driving. I don’t think there would be so much hand wringing if people would stop calling it that.

For me, and others I’ve talked to, it significantly and reliably reduces the stress and fatigue of driving long distances.

On the highway, it works very well. It works very well in very congested traffic. My other cars that have had lane keeping systems, couldn’t actually keep the car in the lane. Friends who have had lane keeping systems from Mercedes, etc have said that the Model 3 is far superior. However, things change, and they were talking about cars from a couple of years back.

So,I completely love it. But I don’t completely trust it. And there are usually times where I take over because I’m not completely confident that it will do what I want it to do, when I want to do it. It has a slightly different driving style than I do.

I think an under appreciated aspect of AP is how well it works with the electric power train. In my other cars with distance-aware cruise control, the system worked, but when traffic slows, then picks back up again, the gas engine and transmission were so slow to engage and catch up, that I usually intervened. But with the EV power train, it’s ability to seamlessly and instantly modulate the speed up and down, just makes it so much better.

So I love what Tesla is doing. But I know others will show up someday with something better, and when they do, I’ll buy that….

If I was buying a new car today, I’d buy the Tesla again.

When the new big FSD updates comes out, I plan to subscribe to it for a month or two and see how well i like it.
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Re: Autonomous Driving platforms

Post by LadyGeek »

I removed an off-topic post. This thread has run it's course and is locked. See: Personal Consumer Issues
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