# Is HW3 required to fix the problems with AP / EAP / NoA / AutoHighBeam / AutoWipers?



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

I've finally concluded NoA is useless as is today. There are situations it works. But in most situations it's pretty bad.

Merging is hazardous to your health.
Lane changes too slow on modest to heavy traffic (regardless of setting).
Phantom braking is only a matter of time before someone rear ends me.

Phantom Braking is probably my number one concern, and I don't see why a super computer is needed to fix it. Because you have zero control over it.

Auto High beam and Auto Wipers also depends on Neural Nets. They can work occasionally. But more often don't than do.

We did a 300 miles trip yesterday. I was driving. My wife was so stressed after the trip. I was trying to use NoA with confirm on, on 16.2 to see if it improved.
I'm yelling at the car, to change lane already. Finally had to "Jerk" it out of Auto Steer and change lanes myself.
It must have Phantom Braked 6 times. Most due to overpasses. We usually make this trip at night to our cabin. This was during the day, so I guess it could see the overpasses a lot better.
Driving at night usually has way less traffic too. In fact we were thinking of staying the night but I decided I rather not drive the car when lots of cars were on the road so we drove home 10PM to Midnight. It was actually a deciding factor !!

I think we can all assume things will get better and get better with HW3 (optimized HW3 code etc.).

But is HW3 required to fix phantom braking. Does it need more frames per second to recognize it's an overpass and not a Semi crossing the road ahead?

It's getting a little frustrating that my wife is starting to prefer we take the Jeep Summit (Extremely quite, Smooth as silk ACC, Auto Wipers perfect, Auto High Beam perfect, Blind Spot, rear cross path warning, not a Single Phantom Brake) to our Cabin instead of the Model 3.
How can I argue otherwise?

But honey it takes gas, I can't make a single argument positive about the tech in the Model 3.


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

I can't say I disagree with lots of those concerns...
I find lane changes far too cautious and often with NoA a bit obtuse (pulling out to pass when my exit is coming up). 
Whenever I have passengers I move to my Chill profile as it makes autopilot a lot more smooth in traffic. 
It might just be the architecture around here, but I basically never get phantom braking. Usually it's on smaller residential roads with parked cars on sweeping curves.

Unfortunately your guess is as good as ours. HW3 is surely going to improve the AP experience. Having 5x the amount of power leaves a lot of room to better calculate the things currently being done as well as adding more features. Time will have to tell.


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## Mr. Spacely (Feb 28, 2019)

This is so odd to hear. I have only had mild phantom breaking a couple times. And with NOAP set to Mad Max, it changes lanes quickly and decisively. Maybe I'm just lucky but my car is pretty close to flawless...


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

casey morgan said:


> This is so odd to hear. I have only had mild phantom breaking a couple times. And with NOAP set to Mad Max, it changes lanes quickly and decisively. Maybe I'm just lucky but my car is pretty close to flawless...


My understanding is the mad max setting for 'speed based lane changes' is how aggressively it chooses whether to pass or not - not how aggressively it performs the maneuver. "That person is 1% slower than me, go around", versus "that person is 10% slower than me, worth it to go around".


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## Mr. Spacely (Feb 28, 2019)

Mad Max speeds up its decision making as well. It isn't crazy and doesn't seem unsafe. Try it.


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

casey morgan said:


> Mad Max speeds up its decision making as well. It isn't crazy and doesn't seem unsafe. Try it.


I found on mad max it just wanted to pass everyone - like I said often making bad decisions like wanting to pass out of the exit lane with only 1/4 mile to get back into that lane, when the person ahead of me is only doing 2km/hr less than me, and the passing lane traffic is only doing 5km/hr faster...so I won't be able to finish the pass and exit in time without some gratuitous suicide changes. It's not worth risking my windshield or the person I'm passing when the reasonable move was just waiting 14 seconds to exit.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

I'm not sure what you are expecting. NOA frankly does a lot better job than any other human that has only been driving for six months. It's downright impressive what it can do. OF COURSE it has a hard time with difficult situations, like merging into very competitive Massachusetts traffic. Just like any teenager. It probably works well in 90% of highways worldwide. But we live in a very special crazy driving place. Surely you must be aware and understanding of that. Surely you must be smart enough not to expect early versions of AI to be able to handle this stuff perfectly. Even experienced humans can't.

If you want a perfect experience from NOA, then only use it on open highways with light traffic. Have some patience and watch it improve slowly over the next year or two.

Wipers used to have issues just six months ago, now they work spectacularly, better than any previous auto-wiper-equipped car I've driven. Of course that's a much simpler situation. And of course there are still exceptions, such as light mist at night. But that should also be understandable, as those tiny drops are well below the resolution of images that are processed.

I honestly have never experienced phantom braking in over 9 months with plenty of AP use. Maybe it is a unique situation or calibration issue?

If you expect perfection from these beta early technologies, then please turn them off and wait a few years before you use them. Might as well also not use any humans to drive either, those computers are also prone to failure.


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

I think that taking a chill pill may help a lot. Sure, NoA in heavy traffic isn't the best, but on a road trip it does work pretty well. The wipers and the headlights should be working fairly well now. 

Everybody drives differently. The car drives differently than most people. You have to let the car drive and expect that it will be driving like a teenager. That means that you need to let it do its thing. That means that something that you think is too long, shouldn't be assumed that it is too long for the car. 

Over the last 2 weeks, I've done four 500 mile trips and the vast majority on FSD. Lights, wipers, and lane changes all worked pretty much as expected. There were a few times that it may have braked, that's why my foot stays near the accelerator. There's a few time that it was trying to change lanes and I canceled. And there was a few times that it tried to change lanes, but with a quickly approaching car, I cancelled it. 

If you kept yelling at the car, that may have been why the wife was so upset. 

An I believe that there is a microphone in the car, the more you yell, the more it will fight back, just like a teenager.

Patience!


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

mswlogo said:


> I've finally concluded NoA is useless as is today. There are situations it works. But in most situations it's pretty bad.
> 
> Merging is hazardous to your health.
> Lane changes too slow on modest to heavy traffic (regardless of setting).
> ...


The NOA and some features are far from perfect. They are still changing and sometimes they make one step forward and 2 steps back. I've had no problems with high beams and wipers in a while. I do understand the lane changes and phantom braking, they have a ways to go.

What I don't understand is that you are driving a car with the highest safety rating by the government and it can be perfectly driven without the EAP/NOA features engaged. Those features seem to be making you and your wife nervous. Maybe enjoy the car for what it is and drive it a bit the old fashioned way until they improve.

If you truly believe that "Phantom braking is only a matter of time before someone rear ends you" then why would you continue to use it. There was a crash of an X in CA sometime back where the driver was killed (the engineer from Apple.) He had told his friends and family how it didn't handle the split in the road, he knew that it didn't detect it well, but yet he continued to use it and not pay attention to or control it. Please use the features sensibly and safely as you see fit. Don't recognize that something doesn't behave in a way you think is unsafe and then complain about it later when it goes wrong.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> The NOA and some features are far from perfect. They are still changing and sometimes they make one step forward and 2 steps back. I've had no problems with high beams and wipers in a while. I do understand the lane changes and phantom braking, they have a ways to go.
> 
> What I don't understand is that you are driving a car with the highest safety rating by the government and it can be perfectly driven without the EAP/NOA features engaged. Those features seem to be making you and your wife nervous. Maybe enjoy the car for what it is and drive it a bit the old fashioned way until they improve.
> 
> If you truly believe that "Phantom braking is only a matter of time before someone rear ends you" then why would you continue to use it. There was a crash of an X in CA sometime back where the driver was killed (the engineer from Apple.) He had told his friends and family how it didn't handle the split in the road, he knew that it didn't detect it well, but yet he continued to use it and not pay attention to or control it. Please use the features sensibly and safely as you see fit. Don't recognize that something doesn't behave in a way you think is unsafe and then complain about it later when it goes wrong.


I have some of those features in the Jeep too. It's "lane assist" is crap though (but it does not harm). But like a said. The Jeep is more relaxing and in some ways less likely to cause an accident.

Blind Spot is better. Beeps if Blinker is on and Car is in that path. So simple. I don't need to start an approach like in Model 3 before something happens.
Rear Cross Path Detection (Model 3 does not even have that). It's a really nice feature.
Auto Highbeam is flawless in the Jeep. A cop pulled over a friend with a Model 3 for "flashing his headlights". It's an absolute joke. It wildly varies with conditions.
I never shut auto high beam off on the Jeep, ever. Well except in fog. I consider it a safety feature to always light the road the best it can. For things like dear crossing etc.
It was so bad yesterday I had to shut if off, in fact I saved a teslacam video of it. Cleary many headlights facing me and behind many cars (up not too far) and it was on.

Auto Wipers, also a total joke on Model 3. Occasionally just the right amount of rain they work. They are horrible in light rain at night. I consider it a safety feature, I also have to keep off.
Jeep Auto wipers are not perfect but they are an order of magnitude better. Occasionally they go wild on light rain.

The highest safety rating is partly misleading in my opinion. First, weight matters. If I hit a suburban head on (I almost did once in the Jeep, Clipped Side Mirrors other car texting) in the "smallish" Model 3 vs my largish Jeep it's really a bit of a throw of dice which with fair better. They don't do those sort of tests. Now hitting a solid structure, sure the Model 3 would fair better. You should also state for any car, highest safety "in it's class". Just like these forums the Jeep Forum gets it's share of accident reports. Jeeps quite often faired extremely well.

Handling wise, I admit the Jeep is joke and that is probably the Model 3's biggest advantage.
But they have sedans with the same features. Like a Chrysler 300 would be a pretty safe, relaxing ride. As well as many other cars with even more advanced safety features, that work.

Also the whole NoA issues, phantom braking etc. I think raises the chances of causing an accident. I could skip using all the tech I suppose. Also they (government) don't test those things yet either (consumer reports did though). But that is partly why I bought the car, and it's seriously lacking right now. It's very "cool" and fun to show off. But in practice it's just not cutting it. That isn't really what this thread is about. Is HW3 required to fix it?

The only source that knows the best on how occupant fair in accidents, is the insurance companies. Problem is cost to repair and bodily injury are lumped together into one index that sets insurance rates. I'm not gonna let Tesla tell me it's the safest car. To be honest I'd much rather be in a Model S than Model 3 (despite Tesla rating it lower). Model S almost as good but a lot heavier.

The lane split issue is the LEAST of Auto Steer issues (and lane split is not really an NoA issue), but you have some control over that. I typically cover the same routes so I know where it struggles. Notice I didn't even complain about lane split. I'm complaining about things that are expected to work. I really want to use the Auto Steer. I can live without the brain dead NoA feature set.

But there seems no excuse for Phantom Braking going on this long. I don't think V8 had this issue. I think it started at V9 or V9 with NoA. It's possible they covered a catastrophic case of driving into something that could happen and they currently feel occasional phantom braking is worth the trade off until HW3. I don't know.

Even TACC is weak. Like I said I usually travel with less cars around and I can go any speed. But during heavier number cars (still moving quite fast) I was always behind someone (throttled by TACC). It's then I realized TACC isn't even up to par. It wasn't terrible. But I could see even some folks getting car sick from it. Again it's subtle. I have noticed it before but it wasn't usally a problem because it didn't go on for very long.

It's not that "NoA" has some features that don't work. As far as I'm concerned none of it works. It can't merge, it can't pass (goes to slow and then appears to look like you cut someone off because they were obviously gaining on you but it was just out of view and the car finally decides to change lanes, slowly to boot). It want's to pass because car in front is going 1 mph slower than the lane that is going 10 mph faster and there is no point is passing the car in front because you'll be in the exact same situation when you pass him. So it nags you over and over. So you slow your set speed and now a gap forms and cars start pulling in front. You end up being the cruise control. And on top of that it constantly "lunges" while sitting behind a car going slower than set speed. NoA works when NoA doesn't have to do anything (basically Auto Steer, which works extremely well except for phantom braking).

The Auto Steer works nice, even in heavy traffic because you have a lot of control. I know where it will struggle. I can do a lane change, initiated by me, most of the time it will do fine. I can handle the known splits or "extra wide lanes".

If they could just fix phantom braking I could deal with waiting for massive improvements needed elsewhere.

Is HW3 required to fix that is my question. There is no doubt in my mind that the NoA/AP/Weak BlindSpot/NoCrossPath/PhantomBreak/Poor AutoHighBeam/Poor Auto Wipe is clearly behind your typical $25K ICE car today. The Model 3 does a whole bunch of stuff that $25K cars don't do. But all though things are incomplete. And even the more basic stuff is incomplete along with it.

My wife has driven the Model 3. Not a ton, but enough. Used all the features. If she had her choice between her 2011 VWCC and Model 3. She'd pick her old VW.
I'd pick the Model 3. But I understand perfectly why she'd pick the VW.

Tesla needs to correct this NOW. Do we have to wait for HW3, because I think that could take a year.


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## Dogwhistle (Jul 2, 2017)

You’ve discovered that NOA doesn’t work well in heavy traffic. Instead of re-wickering your whole trip, just do what I do and don’t use it in those situations. Basic lane-keeping EAP seems to be the least stressful to me, and I direct the lane changes. With the wife in the car, I pretty much just go full manual. Wish there was an option to override TACC and just engage dumb cruise control. Another phantom braking and I don’t think she’ll ride in the car again!

And as far as the comment of what can we expect, it has the driving level of a 16-yo with 6 mos experience; I’ve had a couple of those, driving with them was VERY stressful!


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## wst88 (Oct 31, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> I've finally concluded NoA is useless as is today. There are situations it works. But in most situations it's pretty bad.
> 
> Merging is hazardous to your health.
> Lane changes too slow on modest to heavy traffic (regardless of setting).
> ...


If these features, that are in BETA, are to stressful for you why don't you turn them off? 
The expectiation that these features are not in development is not very fair. When we enable these feature we all become part of the development team for Tesla. Send in your Bug reports.

Honestly, 12.2 was one of the best version I have used.. Ran 3-4K miles and it made all of my trips far easier. 16.2 has some issues with sudden braking and over-reacting, you are correct.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

wst88 said:


> If these features, that are in BETA, are to stressful for you why don't you turn them off?


TACC is _not_ beta. Autosteer is.

There shouldn't be the degree of issues there are with a feature which is not in beta.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

JWardell said:


> I'm not sure what you are expecting. NOA frankly does a lot better job than any other human that has only been driving for six months. It's downright impressive what it can do. OF COURSE it has a hard time with difficult situations, like merging into very competitive Massachusetts traffic. Just like any teenager. It probably works well in 90% of highways worldwide. But we live in a very special crazy driving place. Surely you must be aware and understanding of that. Surely you must be smart enough not to expect early versions of AI to be able to handle this stuff perfectly. Even experienced humans can't.
> 
> If you want a perfect experience from NOA, then only use it on open highways with light traffic. Have some patience and watch it improve slowly over the next year or two.
> 
> ...


Maybe in your experience.

While I haven't tested NOA since a free trial back around 2018.50.6, it's clearly untrue that it does a lot better than _any_ other human that has only been driving for six months. There are some pretty decent human drivers at that point. As well as the average teenager at that point? Maybe. But saying it's clearly better than a human at the same point is hyperbole.

Likewise, the wipers have gotten better, but for me they still don't work well. I drove today in the pouring rain, and that finally coaxed them off of an intermittent mode, but it still was far from the highest speed. How much heavier does it have to rain to trigger that?

I find most of the automation to be, on balance, helpful. But I do think Tesla should put a lot of focus on getting the non-beta automation features to work much better.


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## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

DocScott said:


> TACC is _not_ beta. Autosteer is.


Perhaps the manual is out of date, but it currently states that TACC _is_ a beta feature:

Note: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is a BETA feature.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> I've finally concluded NoA is useless as is today. There are situations it works. But in most situations it's pretty bad.
> 
> Merging is hazardous to your health.
> Lane changes too slow on modest to heavy traffic (regardless of setting).
> ...


in my experience, the only one of these items I find isn't ready (for me at least) is NoA under heavy traffic (which is most all of my commutes). I dont have any issue with auto highbeams, auto wipers, phantom braking, TACC or EAP lane keeping.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Long Ranger said:


> Perhaps the manual is out of date, but it currently states that TACC _is_ a beta feature:
> 
> Note: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is a BETA feature.


Calling everything Beta for 4 years is a cop out. Purely a legal maneuver. It's Beta so you can't sue me if it hurts you.

Are the Auto Wipers and Auto Highbeam Beta too?

So if I want it safe and reliable because it's all Beta I have to dumb it down to a Corolla?

Can I turn off the "Traffic Aware" part and just have plain Jane ACC that isn't Beta?


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> in my experience, the only one of these items I find isn't ready (for me at least) is NoA under heavy traffic (which is most all of my commutes). I dont have any issue with auto highbeams, auto wipers, phantom braking, TACC or EAP lane keeping.


Perhaps we just have different standards of Quality and you've never experienced Auto High beams that actually work flawlessly.

People keep saying stuff has improved. All these things vary a TON. Nothing has really "improved" since NoA was introduced. All the features have good days and bad days.
They have added some nice features but they never seem to finish anything.

Note how the High beams turned on at 16 seconds (which was almost ok), shortly after that it's NOT OK, but they remained on until 33 seconds (way to late to be turned off).
The worst is when they came back ON at 41 seconds, they should NOT be coming on here. Friend got pulled over for this. One of these days I will be too.

And please don't say they shouldn't be on, on the highway. I never need to shut mine off on my Jeep, ever. They are ready for when nobody is on the highway and the moment I get off the highway. Always lighting the road optimally every where I go and not blinding or flashing anyone. I don't have to think about it the conditions it will work. I don't forget to turn them on. They are just always there doing their job. They have lit up distance objects that gave me more time to avoid.

I repeat, do we need the HW3 super computer to get Auto Highbeam to work? I don't have videos for all the other blatant flaws on this really, really basic stuff. But many other things have similar quality issues.


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## Technical48 (Apr 29, 2018)

Long Ranger said:


> Perhaps the manual is out of date, but it currently states that TACC _is_ a beta feature:
> 
> Note: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is a BETA feature.





mswlogo said:


> Calling everything Beta for 4 years is a cop out. Purely a legal maneuver. It's Beta so you can't sue me if it hurts you.
> 
> Are the Auto Wipers and Auto Highbeam Beta too?
> 
> ...


And there's the rub. TACC is a beta feature that can't be disabled. And TACC as currently implemented *sucks*. There's no other way to describe it.


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## Technical48 (Apr 29, 2018)

wst88 said:


> If these features, that are in BETA, are to stressful for you why don't you turn them off?


Because TACC cannot be disabled? So if the driver wants to use CC, TACC is the only option?


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

Long Ranger said:


> Perhaps the manual is out of date, but it currently states that TACC _is_ a beta feature:
> 
> Note: Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is a BETA feature.


My mistake. I must be thinking of plain-vanilla CC (I bought AP when it was "on sale," so started with regular CC).


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

wst88 said:


> If these features, that are in BETA, are to stressful for you why don't you turn them off?
> The expectiation that these features are not in development is not very fair. When we enable these feature we all become part of the development team for Tesla. Send in your Bug reports.
> 
> Honestly, 12.2 was one of the best version I have used.. Ran 3-4K miles and it made all of my trips far easier. 16.2 has some issues with sudden braking and over-reacting, you are correct.


I have shut them off. And that isn't the point of this thread. I'm trying to set realistic expectations.
Will it require HW3 to fix these? I'm sure they have been filed numerous times. What's the point if HW3 is required, because that's what it's feeling like.

Not sure when the Phantom Braking started (problems have all blurred together), but it's been around a good while now.

I've yet to see anything fixed !!! Just more and more bugs (and new features with more bugs).

Backup Camera Black outs.
Random Reboots.
Audio Bass Loss.
Full Audio Loss.
Blasted after using phone by Radio.
Phantom Braking
Crappy Auto High Beam
Crappy Auto Wipers
Lane Splits AP
Handling lanes widening in preperation for exits and jumping back.
My TACC complaint is pretty low on the priority list, but geesh can't they even get this up to par?

I have not experienced some of these, but either friends or consistent reports have shown they are not fixed. Some have not experienced what I have, but I see confirmations of every issue I've had.

I generally like 16.2 (didn't make anything worse, for me, nothing fixed as usual) and added LDA and ELDA (I see a lot of reports though people have issues with it).
I'm trying to remain optimistic that something new isn't a new safety hazard that I'll have to disable.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I have shut them off. And that isn't the point of this thread. I'm trying to set realistic expectations.
> Will it require HW3 to fix these? I'm sure they have been filed numerous times. What's the point if HW3 is required, because that's what it's feeling like.
> 
> Not sure when the Phantom Braking started (problems have all blurred together), but it's been around a good while now.
> ...


I really think we shouldn't be referring to these as "bugs." To me a "bug" is an error in a piece of software that may be hard to track down, but when found, can be fixed fairly easily.

Instead, these are "issues."

Some of the issues are essentially _unsolved_ software problems. Not bugs! But cases where Tesla just hasn't figured out how to do them right yet. Those are the things that have never worked as well as they should, like the Auto Wipers. (One person's "not as well as they should," of course, might be another person's "good enough" or even, if they use it under different conditions, "perfect." For me, the Auto High Beam seems just fine, but I don't think it's behaving different for me than for you.)

Some of the issues are things where the cars just seem flaky. They happen for some people on some firmware versions, but then for different people on other firmware versions. Again, they're not bugs in the classic sense. They're weak points in the system where the features are probably always on the verge of not working and something pushes them over the edge. The backup camera blackouts are a good example. This isn't some piece of code saying "don't turn on the backup camera." Instead, it's probably some various inputs competing for the computer's attention, and the backup camera loses. Sure, activating the backup camera could be given priority, but then maybe the chime for an ultrasonic detection might not sound quickly, or whatever. That's a system operating on the edge of its capabilities, and also not a classic "bug."

We should stop expecting the next firmware to miraculously fix all the problems. We should also stop thinking the people writing firmware updates are idiots, or that the problems are primarily due to a lack of testing.

I think these kinds of problems are deeper than that, mostly.

HW3 may help solve some of the AP/EAP/FSD related ones. But other kinds of problems might require other kinds of solutions, some of which might also be hardware.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I honestly have never experienced phantom braking in over 9 months with plenty of AP use. Maybe it is a unique situation or calibration issue?


That's really interesting. Based on what I see in your signature, I have had my car for four days longer than you have had yours, so our cars were likely built within a week or two of one another. I experience phantom braking at least once a week. It's not usually so drastic that it would be likely to cause an accident unless someone were right on my tail, but it's still highly disconcerting and simply shouldn't happen. My wife's 2016 Volvo has ACC and has never once done anything resembling phantom braking. I otherwise love EAP but would really like phantom braking to completely go away.

My car was delivered with a lot of smudges on the inside of the windshield, in front of the cameras (and hence inaccessible for me to clean), but I never actually noticed it until just before Christmas; you had to look at the glass from just the right angle to see the smudges. I finally had mobile service come by a few weeks ago and they agreed that those needed to be cleaned off, and they did so. The newly clean windshield may have helped a hair with phantom braking but has not eliminated it entirely.

NOA remains pretty useless to me, but I think a lot of that is driven by bad map data. You'd think they could get good map data for Metro Atlanta, but apparently not.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

DocScott said:


> I really think we shouldn't be referring to these as "bugs." To me a "bug" is an error in a piece of software that may be hard to track down, but when found, can be fixed fairly easily.
> 
> Instead, these are "issues."
> 
> ...


Totally agree.

We put ALL future work in a "Bug" databases. We call everything a "Bug". New Features, Enhancements, Bugs etc. are all "Bugs" (Prioritized, Assigned todo list items).
That way all work is prioritized together. A feature could be more important than a bug sometimes.

But yeah, some of these are just "not finished" and are "Functioning As Designed" (with the current resources). I agree also that some could be hardware related. Some might even require a better camera(s).
To be honest to fix some things I think it needs rear radar.
Even Phantom Braking wouldn't worry me as much if I knew it was tracking the rear end better and drastically reduced its "score" to "brake" (or amount to brake) if someone was on my rear end.

You're really touching on my main point, and why I ask do folks think HW3 is required or are these "bugs" (unresolved issues if you will) that could be made to work with the current set of resources?
Sometimes it certainly feels that way by the lack of progress that a bunch will need HW3.
I really don't want to argue over how broken/lacking things are. I see enough reports to know I'm not alone. Different things strike different nerves in folks, partly because they drive in different conditions and have personal habits.

Certainly blacked out screen, audio issues are bugs. Some bugs can be extremely difficult to find in complex multiple embedded systems.
I volunteer my services (for non critical systems, like audio bugs, screen black out).


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## John Di Cecco (Sep 25, 2017)

I'm on 16.2.  I drive with auto pilot on all roads about 90% of the time. Just finished a 500 mile drive. I find NOA, lane changes, etc. vastly improved and love it. Not 100% perfect but much better and safer in my opinion than driving without. As for auto wipers.... I still find I manually override about 50% of the time


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

evannole said:


> That's really interesting. Based on what I see in your signature, I have had my car for four days longer than you have had yours, so our cars were likely built within a week or two of one another. I experience phantom braking at least once a week. It's not usually so drastic that it would be likely to cause an accident unless someone were right on my tail, but it's still highly disconcerting and simply shouldn't happen. My wife's 2016 Volvo has ACC and has never once done anything resembling phantom braking. I otherwise love EAP but would really like phantom braking to completely go away.
> 
> My car was delivered with a lot of smudges on the inside of the windshield, in front of the cameras (and hence inaccessible for me to clean), but I never actually noticed it until just before Christmas; you had to look at the glass from just the right angle to see the smudges. I finally had mobile service come by a few weeks ago and they agreed that those needed to be cleaned off, and they did so. The newly clean windshield may have helped a hair with phantom braking but has not eliminated it entirely.
> 
> NOA remains pretty useless to me, but I think a lot of that is driven by bad map data. You'd think they could get good map data for Metro Atlanta, but apparently not.


I think you and @mswlogo should take careful note of exact locations and situations where phantom braking occurs. People attribute to maps and shadows of bridges or whatever but honestly I'm surprised anyone finds it anything more than completely rare. First, immediately file a bug report after it happens. It probably won't send useful situational info to Tesla, but they will see the high number of reports from the same car, and/or same location, and look into it.
If there is a location around here then I'm happy to try it out and compare.

If you are instead complaining about phantom braking because another car started inching into your lane your car brakes, well sorry Charlie, this is what should and needs to happen for safety. The car doesn't know it is not continuing into your path and needs to err on the safe side. You will see which car is causing this on your display if you look quick enough (try recording it with a GoPro)
I really think a lot can be explained by misunderstanding, and if you understood what the car was doing and why, it would no longer seem wrong to you. It's part of why I dig to understand how every system works and communicates.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I think you and @mswlogo should take careful note of exact locations and situations where phantom braking occurs. People attribute to maps and shadows of bridges or whatever but honestly I'm surprised anyone finds it anything more than completely rare. First, immediately file a bug report after it happens. It probably won't send useful situational info to Tesla, but they will see the high number of reports from the same car, and/or same location, and look into it.
> If there is a location around here then I'm happy to try it out and compare.
> 
> If you are instead complaining about phantom braking because another car started inching into your lane your car brakes, well sorry Charlie, this is what should and needs to happen for safety. The car doesn't know it is not continuing into your path and needs to err on the safe side. You will see which car is causing this on your display if you look quick enough (try recording it with a GoPro)
> I really think a lot can be explained by misunderstanding, and if you understood what the car was doing and why, it would no longer seem wrong to you. It's part of why I dig to understand how every system works and communicates.


Nope, it's always around overpasses and usually it's in a high contrast situation, with both bright sunlight and dark shadows. Quite often there are no cars in front of me when it happens. However, while it often happens at the same places, it doesn't ALWAYS happen in those places, even at similar times and under similar conditions.

Frankly, considering that my wife's Volvo does not do these things in similar situations, chalking my Model 3's behavior up to "misunderstanding" just doesn't cut it. It's quite simple: the car sees shadows or large overpasses and freaks out about hitting them. My wife's Volvo does not do this, and while I think Tesla's AP is, overall, far superior to what her Volvo has, on this particular point, Volvo wins. Tesla needs to get this figured out if they want anyone to take FSD or their TeslaCab service seriously. Maybe eventually they'll decide they need to replace my Autopilot computer, who knows.

I usually try to file a bug report, but sometimes I can't - if traffic is heavy or I happen to be on the phone over Bluetooth. And half the time, the system interprets my "Bug Report, Phantom Braking" in very clear English as "Bug Report, Samsung braking."


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

John Di Cecco said:


> I'm on 16.2. I drive with auto pilot on all roads about 90% of the time. Just finished a 500 mile drive. I find NOA, lane changes, etc. vastly improved and love it. Not 100% perfect but much better and safer in my opinion than driving without. As for auto wipers.... I still find I manually override about 50% of the time


Running NoA off the highway? You said 90% of the roads. That's just asking for trouble or did you mean 90% of highways?

I "override" NoA lane changes 60% of the time. It's easier to just shut it off. If it's not to busy it's "ok". But if it's not to busy "it's basically just doing AutoSteer".
When it's busy, like all cars are maybe 2 car lengths apart, several Semi's always "close by", Right lane 65, Middle lane 70, left lane 75+. I like to be in the middle lane, especially with AutoSteer so that it doesn't wander partially into exit and entrance ramps. Lot depends on how well your roads are marked. In these busy conditions NoA is pretty lame.

I agree with this guy

https://teslaownersonline.com/threads/fw-rollout-process.12564/#post-229754



JWardell said:


> I think you and @mswlogo should take careful note of exact locations and situations where phantom braking occurs. People attribute to maps and shadows of bridges or whatever but honestly I'm surprised anyone finds it anything more than completely rare. First, immediately file a bug report after it happens. It probably won't send useful situational info to Tesla, but they will see the high number of reports from the same car, and/or same location, and look into it.
> If there is a location around here then I'm happy to try it out and compare.
> 
> If you are instead complaining about phantom braking because another car started inching into your lane your car brakes, well sorry Charlie, this is what should and needs to happen for safety. The car doesn't know it is not continuing into your path and needs to err on the safe side. You will see which car is causing this on your display if you look quick enough (try recording it with a GoPro)
> I really think a lot can be explained by misunderstanding, and if you understood what the car was doing and why, it would no longer seem wrong to you. It's part of why I dig to understand how every system works and communicates.


I thought it was getting better. Thought for a while not using NoA helped. I typically drive at night. Yesterday was a day trip and it was cloudy. It must have phantom braked 6 times in 2 hours. Worst day ever.
It's not cars cutting you off, in fact it handles those quite well. I will say it didn't slam on the brakes hard like it has sometimes it was "only" dropping 65 to 40 suddenly (guessing).
I've had it happen when there was not a car in sight. It really seemed like it was bridges (this time). Not sure if it was the shadow they casted or the bridge them selves. It was very dense clouds. It was pretty dark under the bridges.
But I've had it happen with no bridge in sight too.

Like I said, all these issues vary wildly. Don't assume for a minute things are improving. Because they simply are not.
I think we'd hear about some of them in release notes if they were addressed (with sugar coated wording).

Tesla would have to be really brain dead to not know about all of them. Everyone I personally know with a Model 3 all know about them.
I think it is partly a limitation of the hardware. They throw us bones like Sentry and LDA to keep us occupied while they sort out a deployment strategy for HW3.

I'm not here to argue about how much they bother you or don't. You are absolutely kidding your self if you don't think there are serious problems here.
Just look at the stream of threads of comment on these issues (or the CR article that most people agreed with in general).
Folks are optimistic that each release fixes their pet peeve issue. Only to find out on every release, oh crap, it's not fixed.
Many are not fixed because they are random. Almost all issues have a "random" component. Depends a ton on conditions (lighting seems to a huge one).
Like Auto Wipers work horrible at night but Phantom Braking is much less at night (probably because it doesn't see the bridges or other shadows that confuse it).

I'm actually OK with it being overly cautious. I think it will have to be for a long time. But as far as I know it is not checking the rear as part of that decision to brake or not.
I'd be way more confident (with some sort of feedback that's it's looking out back - like a message saying safety braking reduced due to rear obstacle I'd be much more OK with it).
But it just blindly hits the brakes without considering any of the negative consequences of doing so.

Also don't confuse what it "Can" do with what it "Can't" do. It's quite impressive what it can do at times. It's also depressing sometimes what it still "can't" do. I think some people get blinded by what it can do.
And because of what it "Can't" do you don't get to use a lot of what it "Can" do


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## shareef777 (Mar 10, 2019)

wst88 said:


> If these features, that are in BETA, are to stressful for you why don't you turn them off?
> The expectiation that these features are not in development is not very fair. When we enable these feature we all become part of the development team for Tesla. Send in your Bug reports.
> 
> Honestly, 12.2 was one of the best version I have used.. Ran 3-4K miles and it made all of my trips far easier. 16.2 has some issues with sudden braking and over-reacting, you are correct.


Yep, wish I could revert back to 12.2. I'm in complete agreement with the OP. Phantom braking is excessive and prone to cause an accident, that includes standard AP and not just NoA.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

There's probably some interaction between hardware condition and firmware version that accounts for some of the different experiences for different owners. A camera might be aligned a little differently, for example, or the lens a bit smudged. And then if a firmware version has different neural net weights, the results may be different for different cars.

If you think about it, what Tesla is trying to do with cameras and neural nets is _harder_ than what human drivers have to do. Have you ever noticed that when you get new prescription glasses your depth perception is off for a bit, until your own neural net (i.e. your brain) recalibrates? I certainly have! The Tesla neural net is trained on a huge fleet of cars, some of which have variations between the condition of their hardware (at the least, some camera windows are dirtier than others). It's clear there's hardware condition variation because we know cars have to calibrate themselves when first bought! Calibration implies variation. So the training is based on the fleet's vision, but an individual car has only its own vision, with its own quirks. Looked at that way, it's a _very_ hard problem.

I'll give an even more specific hypothetical example. Suppose the camera window on my camera has a scratch. At certain angls, in certain lighting, the scratch can look like something hanging down from an overpass structure in to the roadway. In fact, a human looking at a single video clip might think the same thing. If a human looks at a bunch of video from the same car, though, they soon get used to the scratch and realize it's not an object; the human's own neural net gets reweighted. But that doesn't ever happen with the car, because knowledge of the scratch is diluted across the experience of the whole fleet, 99.999% don't have that scratch. The car with the scratch, therefore, never learns about the particular problem, and will have a lot of phantom braking episodes.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> Running NoA off the highway? You said 90% of the roads. That's just asking for trouble or did you mean 90% of highways?
> 
> I "override" NoA lane changes 60% of the time. It's easier to just shut it off. If it's not to busy it's "ok". But if it's not to busy "it's basically just doing AutoSteer".
> When it's busy, like all cars are maybe 2 car lengths apart, several Semi's always "close by", Right lane 65, Middle lane 70, left lane 75+. I like to be in the middle lane, especially with AutoSteer so that it doesn't wander partially into exit and entrance ramps. Lot depends on how well your roads are marked. In these busy conditions NoA is pretty lame.
> ...


I'm still trying to better understand the situation that you get most of these events.
You say high contrast bridge against bright sky and its shadow, which I can certainly understand might be confusing and difficult to decode depending on angles. But then you say this happens under heavy clouds, which means there are no shadows.
Is it any bridge anywhere, or a few particular places you happen to drive often?



DocScott said:


> There's probably some interaction between hardware condition and firmware version that accounts for some of the different experiences for different owners. A camera might be aligned a little differently, for example, or the lens a bit smudged. And then if a firmware version has different neural net weights, the results may be different for different cars.
> 
> If you think about it, what Tesla is trying to do with cameras and neural nets is _harder_ than what human drivers have to do. Have you ever noticed that when you get new prescription glasses your depth perception is off for a bit, until your own neural net (i.e. your brain) recalibrates? I certainly have! The Tesla neural net is trained on a huge fleet of cars, some of which have variations between the condition of their hardware (at the least, some camera windows are dirtier than others). It's clear there's hardware condition variation because we know cars have to calibrate themselves when first bought! Calibration implies variation. So the training is based on the fleet's vision, but an individual car has only its own vision, with its own quirks. Looked at that way, it's a _very_ hard problem.
> 
> I'll give an even more specific hypothetical example. Suppose the camera window on my camera has a scratch. At certain angls, in certain lighting, the scratch can look like something hanging down from an overpass structure in to the roadway. In fact, a human looking at a single video clip might think the same thing. If a human looks at a bunch of video from the same car, though, they soon get used to the scratch and realize it's not an object; the human's own neural net gets reweighted. But that doesn't ever happen with the car, because knowledge of the scratch is diluted across the experience of the whole fleet, 99.999% don't have that scratch. The car with the scratch, therefore, never learns about the particular problem, and will have a lot of phantom braking episodes.


This is what I was alluding to when I said differences in calibration. We know there are variances in camera installation, position, and glass visibility, that's why we see autopilot camera calibration for the first 30 miles of a new car and often after firmware update. And I can certainly imagine, as you said, a scratch or something causing issues only when strong light passes through at just the right angle. I've certainly had AP issues when driving through wet roads and especially in the winter when everything is covered with sticky salt that slowly covers the cameras. Yes there are wipers over the front cameras, but we also know those wipers don't start wiping until there are at least medium sized drops over it, and thinner mist, or haze, other things falling from the sky can obscure it.

Bottom line is I really want to figure out why a certain small percentage of folks repeatedly have these issues while the majority have none at all.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

JWardell said:


> Bottom line is I really want to figure out why a certain small percentage of folks repeatedly have these issues while the majority have none at all.


Quite honestly, I think the numbers might be flipped. You are quite literally the first owner I have seen who claims to have never experienced phantom braking. But if my car is indeed a outlier, then Tesla ought to be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it, right?


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

evannole said:


> Quite honestly, I think the numbers might be flipped. You are quite literally the first owner I have seen who claims to have never experienced phantom braking. But if my car is indeed a outlier, then Tesla ought to be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it, right?


I have said before, the definition various people give to "phantom braking" varies greatly. between the three different Model 3s I've driving (my own, a week+ rental, and another rented for 1-2 days twice), I've only experienced true phantom braking one time. that was with no other cars next to or ahead of me, nothing overhead, no shadows, nothing that 'should' have caused it, and it was a drastic drop in speed, enough to lock up my seatbelt. In my car, every time there has been a twitch of braking by AP, it has to do with the cars around me. every time.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I experienced phantom braking toward the end of last summer a few times when driving the RWD car. It improved with SW updates. The AWD car that I've had since November driving the same routes has never once had a phantom brake event. I will try to capture some video of the event that used to trigger the other car, which Tesla improved and fixed.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> I have said before, the definition various people give to "phantom braking" varies greatly. between the three different Model 3s I've driving (my own, a week+ rental, and another rented for 1-2 days twice), I've only experienced true phantom braking one time. that was with no other cars next to or ahead of me, nothing overhead, no shadows, nothing that 'should' have caused it, and it was a drastic drop in speed, enough to lock up my seatbelt. In my car, every time there has been a twitch of braking by AP, it has to do with the cars around me. every time.


Fair enough, but as I have said before, the car shouldn't get confused by shadows or overpasses. My wife's Volvo doesn't; why does my Model 3? It's better than its been in the past, but it still happens.

Now, strangely enough, I see a lot of you unhappy with the behavior of the new lane keeping features, while I have found that they behave quite well and certainly as described. I don't know if expectations are different or if our cars truly are behaving differently.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

evannole said:


> Fair enough, but as I have said before, the car shouldn't get confused by shadows or overpasses. My wife's Volvo doesn't; why does my Model 3? It's better than its been in the past, but it still happens.
> 
> Now, strangely enough, I see a lot of you unhappy with the behavior of the new lane keeping features, while I have found that they behave quite well and certainly as described. I don't know if expectations are different or if our cars truly are behaving differently.


I drive every day (twice) across a fairly long bridge with trusses above (making the sunlight strobe and make it hard for ME to see), go under multiple overpasses, signs, etc and never have braking because of shadows.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

evannole said:


> Quite honestly, I think the numbers might be flipped. You are quite literally the first owner I have seen who claims to have never experienced phantom braking. But if my car is indeed a outlier, then Tesla ought to be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it, right?


I don't. This is a forum where people come to discuss and complain, and small problems are amplified. Remember humans are 100x more likely to mention a complaint than if things are fine. And I've only seen a handful of folks (Not just here, I read Reddit and TMC too) complaining loudly. Of course when you are in the room with everyone with the same problem yelling, then of course it feels like it is everybody. But if it were truly a high percentage, then you would see it everywhere, all the time, all in agreement, and frankly the issues would have been addressed immediately. Perhaps a survey asking "Have you experienced several phantom braking issues in 2019" might help judge but then again those with the issue are much more likely to respond than those who don't so you still have the weigh the results


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> I drive every day (twice) across a fairly long bridge with trusses above (making the sunlight strobe and make it hard for ME to see), go under multiple overpasses, signs, etc and never have braking because of shadows.


Nope, those aren't the kind of shadows that give my car problems. For me, it's deep, dark, extended ones that are the result of going under overpasses that are maybe 50-100 yards wide - almost a tunnel, but not quite. (Atlanta has several of te widest freeways in the country, and where they intersect, there are deep shadows galore.)

I am glad you don't have these issues, but the fact remains that many of us do.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

evannole said:


> Nope, those aren't the kind of shadows that give my car problems. For me, it's deep, dark, extended ones that are the result of going under overpasses that are maybe 50-100 yards wide - almost a tunnel, but not quite. (Atlanta has several of te widest freeways in the country, and where they intersect, there are deep shadows galore.)
> 
> I am glad you don't have these issues, but the fact remains that many of us do.


depending on the route I take home, I also go thru true tunnels , have not had any issues entering, traveling thru or exiting while using AP.


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I don't. This is a forum where people come to discuss and complain, and small problems are amplified. Remember humans are 100x more likely to mention a complaint than if things are fine. And I've only seen a handful of folks (Not just here, I read Reddit and TMC too) complaining loudly. Of course when you are in the room with everyone with the same problem yelling, then of course it feels like it is everybody. But if it were truly a high percentage, then you would see it everywhere, all the time, all in agreement, and frankly the issues would have been addressed immediately. Perhaps a survey asking "Have you experienced several phantom braking issues in 2019" might help judge but then again those with the issue are much more likely to respond than those who don't so you still have the weigh the results


Sorry, but I don't agree. I see these complaints here, on TMC, on Reddit and on Tesla's own forum. I can't scroll by a page of posts without seeing at least one reference to these incidents. And the fact remains: that they happen at all is a problem.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> Calling everything Beta for 4 years is a cop out. Purely a legal maneuver. It's Beta so you can't sue me if it hurts you.


But as you have noted, it doesn't work well yet. I see no indication that the feature is ready to go beyond "beta" yet, regardless of how long it's been available.


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## Flashgj (Oct 11, 2018)

Every support forum I have ever visited for all kinds of hardware and software are filled with complaints. Enough that you would think they are all terrible products not worth owning, even though for the vast majority of them I have been extremely happy with my purchase and love the products, Tesla included!!

BTW, I have only had about 3-4 phantom breaking episodes in my 8 months of having my model 3. None of them big enough to even be much of a bother and prevent me from wanting to use NOA.


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## nonStopSwagger (May 7, 2018)

My Tesla phantom brakes a lot, but I have noticed it has gotten better since I got the car last year. It seems to have certain roads where the risk of it doing it is high. If you drive those roads frequently, you learn the behavior and turn it off before it does it. Not ideal, but it works for now.

Some people on here are lucky, the environment where they primarly drive doesn't cause the unwanted braking. Others, not so lucky.

Love my Tesla, warts and all.


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## adam m (Feb 1, 2019)

The auto wipers are terrible, they almost never work as expected. If there are drops on the windshield the wipers should be going. When they do work it usually seems erratic, like the wash button being used instead some constant rate.


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## nonStopSwagger (May 7, 2018)

adam m said:


> The auto wipers are terrible, they almost never work as expected. If there are drops on the windshield the wipers should be going. When they do work it usually seems erratic, like the wash button being used instead some constant rate.


I'm happy with them so long as its daylight. Once night falls, they are useless unless you are in a well illuminated area.

Last year was a different story. Terrible, day or night.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

garsh said:


> But as you have noted, it doesn't work well yet. I see no indication that the feature is ready to go beyond "beta" yet, regardless of how long it's been available.


But plain old autosteer worked better months ago !! I don't really care that much about all the "NoA" crap.
I was happy with it just holding a lane and changing a lane when I told it without the phantom braking.

I still use it, but I think I'm taking a gamble with it (how big that gamble is, I don't know). Do I tell my wife to use it (she wants to use cruise control)? Why do I even have to question if I should. It's kind of ridiculous.

What do I tell her (with my $78,000 car)? I tell her to, take the Jeep (and she would have really have preferred her old 2011 VW CC to the Jeep because she preferred it's size and handling) I get lots of rolling eyes 
Model 3 cost 3x (before tax credits) what the VW CC did.

I wonder if it will phantom brake with just TACC? It sounds like it's the "Traffic Aware" part of TACC that does it. Not the Autosteering.

Keep in mind I'll go weeks with no Phantom Braking. As days are longer I'll be traveling with brighter skies which will on average make it worse.

I also wonder if I adjust some the crash prevention stuff (I do have something set on "Early" if I recall) and the TACC car lengths ahead ( I have that usually on Max).
I hate backing off on safety features to use a "luxury" feature though.

I have my Jeep set to "most sensitive", it has never false braked in 90K miles. It has false warned a few times though.
I know plenty of folks (because of how they drive) set it on least sensitive still complain of false braking and eventually turned it off. Lot depends on how you drive.
I drive very conservatively. If someone is on my butt I'll pull over if I'm on a single lane road. I don't mind cars cutting in front if I set my Max distance to 7 car lengths.
Maybe if it was set closer, it might pay more attention to the car in front than the bridge.

Some folks that have less issues might have some of these things set differently. Since it's so random it's hard to know if the settings even affect the probability of it happening.


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## nonStopSwagger (May 7, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> I wonder if it will phantom brake with just TACC? It sounds like it's the "Traffic Aware" part of TACC that does it. Not the Autosteering..


I use TACC more then AP. It still does it.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

nonStopSwagger said:


> I'm happy with them so long as its daylight. Once night falls, they are useless unless you are in a well illuminated area.
> 
> Last year was a different story. Terrible, day or night.


That's my experience as well. And my wife is a bit nervous taking her eyes off the road for the screen. And you have to, because Auto Wipers don't work so often.
She shouldn't have to take her eyes off the road to manually control the "Auto" wipers.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

adam m said:


> If there are drops on the windshield the wipers should be going.


no, that is your opinion. a drop does not interfere with visibility and I do not want the wipers constantly going whenever there is a single drop on the windshield. My only complaint on the wipers is they swipe TOO often.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> That's my experience as well. And my wife is a bit nervous taking her eyes off the road for the screen. And you have to, because Auto Wipers don't work so often.
> She shouldn't have to take her eyes off the road to manually control the "Auto" wipers.


Folks keep saying it's beta, don't use it. It's generally running dumber than the $2500 VW CC we replaced. And I do tell her don't use it, as in, don't use the Model 3, it's to dangerous for you !!!


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## evannole (Jun 18, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> Folks keep saying it's beta, don't use it. It's generally running dumber than the $2500 VW CC we replaced. And I do tell her don't use it, as in, don't use the Model 3, it's to dangerous for you !!!


Despite my misgivings about phantom braking and the general uselessness of NOA, I overall love EAP and think it works very well. I also am very happy with the auto wipers; I almost never activate them manually except for occasionally pushing the button on the stalk when it's misting.

I, too, had a VW CC before my Model 3. The CC was the worst car I have ever had, without question. I was so glad to get rid of it.


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## atebit (Jan 26, 2018)

[mod edit: refrain from name-calling of those who disagree please] I agree 100% with the phantom braking comment, as well the "tractor trailer" comment. Seems like the car has the mentality of a cat chasing a laser pointer some days.

I've driven ICE rentals that do a much better job at these driver assistance features than my George Jetson car does. Maybe one day Continuous Inconvenience will pay off. All things being equal, I'd prefer actually testing features before releasing them. But hey, I'm old.

On the plus side, Dog Mode & the Atari games work flawlessly. So we've got that going for us.


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## Kizzy (Jul 25, 2016)

MelindaV said:


> My only complaint on the wipers is they swipe TOO often.


I only have that complaint when it's _not_ raining. 

Maybe we just need an upgrade to our environments so they all behave the same.


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

fwiw I have one road segment that is 30km/h instead of 60km/h that causes problems...other than that in 20000 km where I drive almost exclusively on EAP when possible I've never had a phantom brake event to my knowledge.


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## TomT (Apr 1, 2019)

And the answer is that no one knows, at least outside of Tesla, at this juncture...



mswlogo said:


> Is HW3 required to fix that is my question.


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## tencate (Jan 11, 2018)

atebit said:


> I've driven ICE rentals that do a much better job at these driver assistance features than my George Jetson car does. Maybe one day Continuous Inconvenience will pay off. All things being equal, I'd prefer actually testing features before releasing them. But hey, I'm old.


I'm old too and my other car is an old British Triumph  I've skimmed through this entire thread (yowsa) and will add my datapoint to the discussion. After 37k miles and a couple of winters on all kinds of roads and weather etc, I find the whole "autopilot" experience is getting to be borderline amazing, especially compared to when I first got the car (when it was mostly downright scary at times). Back then think of it as behaving like the first or second time a teenager gets behind the wheel. The advances to the whole software suite in just a year have been truly astounding to me. It's gotten to where on any long drive, the car drives most of it. It feels like a teenager with a year's of experience behind the wheel and about to get their own drivers license is driving the car. I've got it set to Mad Max and the lane changes feel kinda rushed to me but OK. I find the software works great in bumper to bumper LA traffic, on most highway situations---although not so great in and around big cities where some cars and typically travelling 150 mph or more at times---and works pretty well in moderate density highway traffic situations too. Where I'm uncomfortable is in highly congested, really fast moving traffic (like Houston, or Atlanta). I just turn it off and drive myself through those areas. I've played around with it on city streets, and smaller highways too and it's pretty good in those situations too although there's clearly things the "teenage autopilot" is still learning. I'm amazed at how well it "sees" lane lines now. I wish I could rewind time and let all of you drive the car back in late 2017 so you could see how far EAP/Autopilot has come in just a year. And that's without the huge installed user base Tesla has now. Yes, I'm annoyed by phantom braking at times and worry about being rear ended, and sometimes (not often) the autowipers seem to have a mind of their own. But I'm also patient having lived through 1.5 years+ of software updates and can't wait for each additional update to see what's gotten better. The Tesla is THE car of choice on any trip I take. Perhaps the car has trained ME to adapt my driving to its current idiosyncracies? Either way, long trips are a breeze these days.


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I have shut them off. And that isn't the point of this thread. I'm trying to set realistic expectations.
> Will it require HW3 to fix these? I'm sure they have been filed numerous times. What's the point if HW3 is required, because that's what it's feeling like.
> 
> Not sure when the Phantom Braking started (problems have all blurred together), but it's been around a good while now.
> ...


16.2 broke a ton of things for me.
Homelink was 99.9% perfect before 16.2. Works about 50% of the time now.
Auto lock is broken. Reboot is no help. I have to lock the car with the Tesla app.
ELDA is terrible for me. I don't remember each time I drive to disable it. Short trips with many stops...you get the idea.
Radio randomly stops, reboot necessary each time.
Screen frozen after sleeping. Happens randomly.
Auto high beams are anything but.
I'm sure that a firmware update will help, but what are you waiting for Tesla? I had mobile service here Friday. Tech said Tesla is aware of the ELDA issue. I, like all of us here, will have to stay tuned.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

HCD3 said:


> 16.2 broke a ton of things for me.
> Homelink was 99.9% perfect before 16.2. Works about 50% of the time now.
> Auto lock is broken. Reboot is no help. I have to lock the car with the Tesla app.
> ELDA is terrible for me. I don't remember each time I drive to disable it. Short trips with many stops...you get the idea.
> ...


I have not noticed any changes in 16.2 except the new LDA and ELDA which have been ok for me. I can see how this could vary a lot though on conditions and driving style (much like some folks are ok with NoA and TACC). But the Jury is still out on LDA/ELDA for me.

You could consider a factory reset. You will lose lifetime trip computer if you keep one. I'll be honest though I've done it a couple times and it didn't fix my pet peeve issue of the day (lack of car sleeping). But I like the clean slate on things like this. It's like wiping a glitchy phone.

A lot of your "new" issues have been around for a while and seem to come and go for folks. They seem to surface and go away by the process of updates. Not the update itself.

My car has never lost bass, audio, rebooted, or stuck screen (but I know many others have for quite some time). But mine has had the black back up screen that comes and goes like the wind. These days it's been instant backup screen and sleeping like a baby.

So I really doubt these are 16.2 issues your running into but more the the V9 demon has decided to swoop down on you for a little while. He'll leave soon enough I hope.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I have not noticed any changes in 16.2 except the new LDA and ELDA which have been ok for me. I can see how this could vary a lot though on conditions and driving style (much like some folks are ok with NoA and TACC). But the Jury is still out on LDA/ELDA for me.
> 
> You could consider a factory reset. You will lose lifetime trip computer if you keep one. I'll be honest though I've done it a couple times and it didn't fix my pet peeve issue of the day (lack of car sleeping). But I like the clean slate on things like this. It's like wiping a glitchy phone.
> 
> ...


Totally agree with mswlogo's description of these "V9 demons."

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Tesla should offer a way to reinstall the same firmware you're already on. (Only on wifi, of course!) That would give something to try for this kind of issue that would be a step short of a factory reset. If they're worried about overloading the servers, maybe limit it to one per car per firmware version--a second attempt (really a third, counting the first download) on the same version could trigger a message to contact Tesla support regarding any unresolved problems.


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## msjulie (Feb 6, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I'm not sure what you are expecting. NOA frankly does a lot better job than any other human that has only been driving for six months.


Forgive my lateness to this reply, but were you serious or poking a bit of fun at AP or both? I would agree that AP is like a nervous new driver..


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I have not noticed any changes in 16.2 except the new LDA and ELDA which have been ok for me. I can see how this could vary a lot though on conditions and driving style (much like some folks are ok with NoA and TACC). But the Jury is still out on LDA/ELDA for me.
> 
> You could consider a factory reset. You will lose lifetime trip computer if you keep one. I'll be honest though I've done it a couple times and it didn't fix my pet peeve issue of the day (lack of car sleeping). But I like the clean slate on things like this. It's like wiping a glitchy phone.
> 
> ...


Hi Ms. if I do a factory reset, what do I lose.


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## Jay79 (Aug 18, 2018)

I think quite a few owners expectations are extremely high, more so than any other vehicle they have ever owned. We all agree that our cars are leading the way in technology and innovation but also has its short comings as well. Knowing that the car will continue to improve helps when AP doesn't work so great. Even if it never improved as such is the case with every other car on the road, I would still be very happy. At the end of the day the systems we have in our cars have broken new ground on what is possible in a car. Your patients will be greatly rewarded as all of us are early adopters of the next generation of transportation. Kinda like the first group to go from a horse and buggy to a combustion engine. Exciting times indeed!


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Jay79 said:


> I think quite a few owners expectations are extremely high, more so than any other vehicle they have ever owned. We all agree that our cars are leading the way in technology and innovation but also has its short comings as well. Knowing that the car will continue to improve helps when AP doesn't work so great. Even if it never improved as such is the case with every other car on the road, I would still be very happy. At the end of the day the systems we have in our cars have broken new ground on what is possible in a car. Your patients will be greatly rewarded as all of us are early adopters of the next generation of transportation. Kinda like the first group to go from a horse and buggy to a combustion engine. Exciting times indeed!


I agree with your first half, and optimistic that most will be addressed within a year. But I would not be content if there were no more updates. To many basic things not working up to par. To many bugs/gremlins that come and go and not acceptable for the long run.


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## msjulie (Feb 6, 2018)

Jay79 said:


> I think quite a few owners expectations are extremely high, more so than any other vehicle they have ever owned. We all agree that our cars are leading the way in technology and innovation but also has its short comings as well. Knowing that the car will continue to improve helps when AP doesn't work so great. Even if it never improved as such is the case with every other car on the road, I would still be very happy. At the end of the day the systems we have in our cars have broken new ground on what is possible in a car. Your patients will be greatly rewarded as all of us are early adopters of the next generation of transportation. Kinda like the first group to go from a horse and buggy to a combustion engine. Exciting times indeed!


Yes indeed. And in no case does that reduce the importance of owner choice!  Frankly, were that the default, more folks might be motivated to try out and test as they will feel confident they could turn something off until such time their confidence in new features warranted. For me, I have blocked all new updates until (hoping when not if) owner choice returns


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## StromTrooperM3 (Mar 27, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> Phantom braking is only a matter of time before someone rear ends me


I agree with you 100%. Everything about AP acts so far out of human norm that I'm sure the technology actually causes accidents to other drivers


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

HCD3 said:


> Hi Ms. if I do a factory reset, what do I lose.


Oddly enough you don't lose any of the station favorites etc. in the radio.
All "settings" (Chill, Creep, NoA settings).
All trip computers.
It does not lose "Auto Pilot" calibration.
It does not reset "TPMS".
It does not lose Key Cards or Phone as Key.
It does lose Garage door opener links.
It does lose all bluetooth Audio/Phone Pairings.
I think it did reset "Car Name".

I forget if you need to reaccept license related stuff. I think you do for the "Beta" stuff.

It felt like it might have had to re-download some map data. I forget what happened but it wouldn't route correctly or was limited for a day.

Sometimes I like to know what all the defaults are on some things to.

Overall it's not a big deal. I wrote down everything I changed from factory Default the last time I did it.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

JWardell said:


> I'm still trying to better understand the situation that you get most of these events.
> You say high contrast bridge against bright sky and its shadow, which I can certainly understand might be confusing and difficult to decode depending on angles. But then you say this happens under heavy clouds, which means there are no shadows.
> Is it any bridge anywhere, or a few particular places you happen to drive often?


Drove the same road today. It was bright and sunny. Not a single phantom brake. Just as busy too.

It has a mind of it's own.

When ever you watch TeslaCam videos you can see how the camera "shift" their dynamic range. I think the dark cloudy day had something to do with it seeing the bridges "better" as possible obstacles.
You know, sometimes photos come out better on cloudy days


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> no, that is your opinion. a drop does not interfere with visibility and I do not want the wipers constantly going whenever there is a single drop on the windshield. My only complaint on the wipers is they swipe TOO often.


You should know what he meant. He didn't say one drop and he didn't say how often. It should be the "right frequency"

There are often "some complaints" with all auto wipers on lots of cars. Because it's partly personal of how often you like to let it go before wiping.
But the Auto Wipers here can be way off. Most often lack of wiping enough for the conditions. Windshield can be completely blinded by drops and it won't wipe and I'm forced to switch it to manual.

Every "Auto Wiper" I have had, has a sensitivity adjustment that this does not, because peoples preferences do vary. But I think it has even more fundamental issues than even that.

I think part of it has to do with how the cameras switch dynamic range for various lighting. For camera buff's it has "Auto-ISO" on and it sucks.


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## barjohn (Aug 31, 2017)

Getting back to the original question of this thread, I do think HW 3 is needed. I have thought the computing power was over taxed for some time. It is apparent that they have refactored the software a few times trying to squeeze as much performance as they can out of the hardware with more efficient code but the same evidence I saw in the past is still evident in 16.2 but in all fairness to a lesser degree. What is that evidence? The fact that the visualizations on the screen lag the events you are seeing in real-time in front of you. Last year just prior to the release of V9 it was quite noticeable now you have to look closely but if you do, you will see that the action is slightly behind reality. In other words, with all of its computing power, it can process what the camera is showing and redisplay it as an animation fast enough. 

If you are a camera buff, you can see the same thing in less expensive cameras where the image on the back is slightly behind reality. This can make it difficult to capture the decisive moment because by the time you see it on the screen or in the eye piece and process that now is the time to press the shutter, it is too late. Of course with cheaper cameras there is often another delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera processing the image (setting aperture, shutter speed and focus so results are less than optimal. High end cameras, like those used by professional photographer have much faster processors, here their ability to display the image and perform all of the other functions so quickly that they can capture that prize winning photo (and yes they may shoot multiple frames in a second to help but that too takes more processing power).

My point is I should not be able to discern the delay by just looking unless the processor is struggling to keep up with reality. Further evidence that concerns me is that Tesla is already developing a faster processor to replace HDW 3 that most of us don't even have yet. This says to me that they aren't sure HDW 3 will be adequate to do the task and have to develop HDW 4. Are we going to get ti for free if HDW 3 can't do what was promised or will they redefine what HDW 3 can provide? I don't know but I purchased this car to last me at least 5-10 years.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

barjohn said:


> Getting back to the original question of this thread, I do think HW 3 is needed. I have thought the computing power was over taxed for some time. It is apparent that they have refactored the software a few times trying to squeeze as much performance as they can out of the hardware with more efficient code but the same evidence I saw in the past is still evident in 16.2 but in all fairness to a lesser degree. What is that evidence? The fact that the visualizations on the screen lag the events you are seeing in real-time in front of you. Last year just prior to the release of V9 it was quite noticeable now you have to look closely but if you do, you will see that the action is slightly behind reality. In other words, with all of its computing power, it can process what the camera is showing and redisplay it as an animation fast enough.
> 
> If you are a camera buff, you can see the same thing in less expensive cameras where the image on the back is slightly behind reality. This can make it difficult to capture the decisive moment because by the time you see it on the screen or in the eye piece and process that now is the time to press the shutter, it is too late. Of course with cheaper cameras there is often another delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera processing the image (setting aperture, shutter speed and focus so results are less than optimal. High end cameras, like those used by professional photographer have much faster processors, here their ability to display the image and perform all of the other functions so quickly that they can capture that prize winning photo (and yes they may shoot multiple frames in a second to help but that too takes more processing power).
> 
> My point is I should not be able to discern the delay by just looking unless the processor is struggling to keep up with reality. Further evidence that concerns me is that Tesla is already developing a faster processor to replace HDW 3 that most of us don't even have yet. This says to me that they aren't sure HDW 3 will be adequate to do the task and have to develop HDW 4. Are we going to get ti for free if HDW 3 can't do what was promised or will they redefine what HDW 3 can provide? I don't know but I purchased this car to last me at least 5-10 years.


Is it the AP/FSD chip that has to be faster, or the MCU? The delay could be due to either: if the AP/FSD chip is slow to process the image data, it would be late to get it to the screen. But even if the AP/FSD chip is quite fast, if the MCU is straining, there might be a delay for that reason.

Any idea how to tell which it is?


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

barjohn said:


> Getting back to the original question of this thread, I do think HW 3 is needed. I have thought the computing power was over taxed for some time. It is apparent that they have refactored the software a few times trying to squeeze as much performance as they can out of the hardware with more efficient code but the same evidence I saw in the past is still evident in 16.2 but in all fairness to a lesser degree. What is that evidence? The fact that the visualizations on the screen lag the events you are seeing in real-time in front of you. Last year just prior to the release of V9 it was quite noticeable now you have to look closely but if you do, you will see that the action is slightly behind reality. In other words, with all of its computing power, it can process what the camera is showing and redisplay it as an animation fast enough.
> 
> If you are a camera buff, you can see the same thing in less expensive cameras where the image on the back is slightly behind reality. This can make it difficult to capture the decisive moment because by the time you see it on the screen or in the eye piece and process that now is the time to press the shutter, it is too late. Of course with cheaper cameras there is often another delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera processing the image (setting aperture, shutter speed and focus so results are less than optimal. High end cameras, like those used by professional photographer have much faster processors, here their ability to display the image and perform all of the other functions so quickly that they can capture that prize winning photo (and yes they may shoot multiple frames in a second to help but that too takes more processing power).
> 
> My point is I should not be able to discern the delay by just looking unless the processor is struggling to keep up with reality. Further evidence that concerns me is that Tesla is already developing a faster processor to replace HDW 3 that most of us don't even have yet. This says to me that they aren't sure HDW 3 will be adequate to do the task and have to develop HDW 4. Are we going to get ti for free if HDW 3 can't do what was promised or will they redefine what HDW 3 can provide? I don't know but I purchased this car to last me at least 5-10 years.


I think you nailed it. And thanks for steering things on topic.

You know another hint that the HW 2.5 isn't enough. The wiggling cars on the screen. That is what the current AP CPU has deduced !!

I'm not to concerned about HW4. A big goal of that might be to reduce watts for all we know.

My bigger concern is, are the HW 2/2.5/3.0 cameras good enough for true FSD (not even expecting level 5). The more FPS will surely help a ton, but is the single frame good enough.
Also concerned with what goes on directly behind the car does not see far enough (nor does it understand distance to objects) as it does looking forward.
I think the rear should mimic what they have in front (Triple camera (similar focus) and radar).


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## barjohn (Aug 31, 2017)

Without having access to the code, it is difficult to say for sure however, given that there is relatively light load on the MCU and the instability of the rendered animation it appears to me to be more likely to be the AP/FSD processing. The MCU is providing the UI, which any processor can do fairly well as evidenced on your home computer or lap top. In fact you can open multiple streaming windows in real-time and if you have sufficient Internet bandwidth display them all running simultaneously. The Intel GPU in the MCU should be capable of doing the same. However, having a neural net process the images and then have it tell the MCU what to render and where is a much more difficult computing task. Watch the render change from truck to car to person to bike, etc. while jumping all over is more evidence that the task requires a lot more computing to make reliable decisions in real-time. Especially as the perspective on the image may be changing.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

barjohn said:


> Without having access to the code, it is difficult to say for sure however, given that there is relatively light load on the MCU and the instability of the rendered animation it appears to me to be more likely to be the AP/FSD processing. The MCU is providing the UI, which any processor can do fairly well as evidenced on your home computer or lap top. In fact you can open multiple streaming windows in real-time and if you have sufficient Internet bandwidth display them all running simultaneously. The Intel GPU in the MCU should be capable of doing the same. However, having a neural net process the images and then have it tell the MCU what to render and where is a much more difficult computing task. Watch the render change from truck to car to person to bike, etc. while jumping all over is more evidence that the task requires a lot more computing to make reliable decisions in real-time. Especially as the perspective on the image may be changing.


Good points.

I think there's circumstantial evidence that the MCU is straining too (well, maybe not the processor, but maybe the memory associated with it). The problems people have with screen freezes, the backup camera being slow to come on, audio drop-outs, etc. shouldn't have anything to do with image analysis, but seem like a computer system operating at the edge of its capabilities. Can anyone point me to the specs on the Model 3 MCU, including RAM? How does it compare to a typical modern laptop?


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## barjohn (Aug 31, 2017)

It never ceases to amaze me how the bean counters can frequently override the engineers or at least push the engineers to do something they know is stupid. Using the least expensive processor and the minimum amount of memory to perform at a low level should be a crime. You can see it in a lot of current high end cars where there is no excuse for that kind of cost cutting. The UI is so unresponsive that you know the processor is way underrated and memory is probably too limiting too. For a few dollars more they could put in a much better and faster processor and a lot more memory to handle both present and future requirements but they often don't. 

As an amateur photographer I saw this in cameras repeated ad nauseam. Auto focus would be incredibly slow, shutter lag was horrendous and even though these were semi-pro cameras, they just didn't perform. New models would be released and have the same issues as the prior version. The manufacturers have ignored customer complaints to the point that now many of them are dead and gone. Yes, they saved a couple of bucks in the short haul but lost it all in the long one.

Something that concerns me because I am both a Tesla owner and investor is what happens to Tesla should someone else come out with an FSD system, let's say level 4 before Tesla and it is reliable and works well? Intel through Mobileye is putting a lot of money and resources into doing that and they are getting a lot of big name car makers to adopt their technology. Such an event could really hurt Tesla sales and stock. I would hate to see it happen.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

DocScott said:


> Good points.
> 
> I think there's circumstantial evidence that the MCU is straining too (well, maybe not the processor, but maybe the memory associated with it). The problems people have with screen freezes, the backup camera being slow to come on, audio drop-outs, etc. shouldn't have anything to do with image analysis, but seem like a computer system operating at the edge of its capabilities. Can anyone point me to the specs on the Model 3 MCU, including RAM? How does it compare to a typical modern laptop?


Those are bugs. CPU doesn't go slow one day and fast the next. I've had the backup camera not come on for 1/2 a day (that has not happened for months though). Most days instant, sometimes 1 second delay. I've been lucky and had zero audio issues and never rebooted while driving or when waking up. Never had a screen freeze either. Now I just jinxed myself for sure. It's possible that it's doing some sort of background maintenance, uploading logs, downloading maps, downloading updates when some of those issues act up. But I doubt it. There are tons of asynchronous things going on and it's tough to test/verify/prove every combination is robust.

It does concern me that even bugs like lost Audio (which has not happened to me), is a safety issue, is not AP CPU related and has not been addressed. It could be marginal hardware having issues causing problems too. Like a bad sensor. Tesla might well know it too, but it might be costly to fix and they are trying to find a software fix to work around it. I've seen manufacturers do this sort of thing before. Like my Jeep, they had an issue with an ABS controller on the CAN bus. The initial fix was a new ABS Controller (very expensive). They stopped replacing ABS Controllers and issued "a software patch". It would take like 4 hours of flashing to "fix it". I suspect that they flashed every CAN node to ignore some bogus message sent by the ABS Controller onto the CAN bus. Sometimes the 4 hours of flashing would go bad and they would "brick" the car and had to replace the dash to replace the bricked chip. It was quite obvious they were trying to avoid replacing every ABS Controller. I'm not saying Tesla is doing that. But things like massaging the charge port lock for 6 hours to prevent it from freezing sure feels like they are trying to avoid replacing every charge port. Or keeping windows down 1/2 inch to avoid replacing/redesigning a bad design that can hold moisture that can freeze shut. I can't blame these companies. But I would not rule out some issues not getting fixed being hardware related (and not even a hardware resource issue).

One way to know is tracking build dates and who sees what bugs. Because if it is understood hardware issue it could be fixed in production.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

barjohn said:


> It never ceases to amaze me how the bean counters can frequently override the engineers or at least push the engineers to do something they know is stupid. Using the least expensive processor and the minimum amount of memory to perform at a low level should be a crime. You can see it in a lot of current high end cars where there is no excuse for that kind of cost cutting. The UI is so unresponsive that you know the processor is way underrated and memory is probably too limiting too. For a few dollars more they could put in a much better and faster processor and a lot more memory to handle both present and future requirements but they often don't.
> 
> As an amateur photographer I saw this in cameras repeated ad nauseam. Auto focus would be incredibly slow, shutter lag was horrendous and even though these were semi-pro cameras, they just didn't perform. New models would be released and have the same issues as the prior version. The manufacturers have ignored customer complaints to the point that now many of them are dead and gone. Yes, they saved a couple of bucks in the short haul but lost it all in the long one.
> 
> Something that concerns me because I am both a Tesla owner and investor is what happens to Tesla should someone else come out with an FSD system, let's say level 4 before Tesla and it is reliable and works well? Intel through Mobileye is putting a lot of money and resources into doing that and they are getting a lot of big name car makers to adopt their technology. Such an event could really hurt Tesla sales and stock. I would hate to see it happen.


I agree with your point about some companies undersizing things. I assume your talking about some other car companies, not Tesla as far as undersizing entertainment CPU's etc. I have not seen that with VW or Jeep but I have heard of it with some car makers. 99% of the time it's code though. Or the system is trying to do what it wasn't originally spec'd to do.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> Those are bugs. CPU doesn't go slow one day and fast the next. I've had the backup camera not come on for 1/2 a day (that has not happened for months though). Most days instant, sometimes 1 second delay. I've been lucky and had zero audio issues and never rebooted while driving or when waking up. Never had a screen freeze either. Now I just jinxed myself for sure. It's possible that it's doing some sort of background maintenance, uploading logs, downloading maps, downloading updates when some of those issues act up. But I doubt it. There are tons of asynchronous things going on and it's tough to test/verify/prove every combination is robust.


If they plagued every car 1% of the time, I'd be willing to call them "bugs." If they plagued cars with a certain firmware combined with certain hardware, or certain use cases, then yes, bugs.

It doesn't seem to be the pattern, though. Instead they affect some cars more than others but without seeming relation to manufacture date or version of the car (SR+, LWD, etc.) and last for one or more firmware updates, and then sometimes resolve themselves. I don't think most of them come from errors in the code which are then resolved.

The behavior seems much more like how home computers behave if you never reboot them. Memory leaks, background processed that don't close, etc., gradually degrade performance. Sometimes specific features get sluggish or turn off. Rebooting kills all those processes and gets you back to normal. But the Tesla reboots (short of factory reset) aren't as complete as that; certainly the fact that the "two-finger" reboot can be used while driving shows that it's not killing all processes.

It's not quite like that either, though, because the problems seem to appear with a new upgrade, rather than getting worse with continued use. Maybe some registers don't get set right. Maybe post-upgrade calibration is off, and some sensor keeps sending alerts that slow down the system. I'm sure there are lots of other possibilities I haven't thought of.

But in any case, those kinds of things only turn in to the observed behaviors if the system is already acting on the edge of its capabilities. I really doubt there is an error of code that makes a backup camera take twenty seconds to turn on rather than half a second. Instead, it's probably the backup camera process saying "can I turn on now?" and the CPU saying "not yet, I'm busy" (or "not yet, I haven't cleared out enough memory for the display") over and over again until the process is allowed.

I know that's sort of semantics--it still means the code isn't that well written. But in keeping with the theme of this thread, it also suggests to me that it's possible as non-AP/FSD features are added that we made need MCU/memory upgrades at some point to keep everything running smoothly.


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## porkupan (Jul 24, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> no, that is your opinion. a drop does not interfere with visibility and I do not want the wipers constantly going whenever there is a single drop on the windshield. My only complaint on the wipers is they swipe TOO often.


Everything is someone's opinion. I've had differing experience with Auto wipers depending on the firmware level. Sometimes they seemed to work almost perfectly, at other times they were useless. I've seen them go on very slow intermittent when it was pouring rain, and I've seen them start wiping out the dry glass in the full sun.

The thing is, some people are always funboy-happy, and some always complain, but the truth must be somewhere in the middle.

I suspect the reliance on the video processing for most Tesla features is its biggest flaw. The camera is not a human eye that can adjust to light conditions, and its video sensitivity may vary (weather, time of day, a particular sensor or lens, initial calibration conditions). The video processing algorithms may sometimes mistake a shadow for a wall, or fail to anticipate the direction of the vehicle based on driver's steering or braking intent. Some software (Mobile Eye, licensed by most manufacturers) seems to work better and more consistently that other software (Tesla!). Things may depend upon video calibration. Things may depend on software bugs, optimizations and memory leaks.

I can tell you what bugs me personally about Tesla. It doesn't seem to strive for _perfect_. It seems to look for yet another new "feature" to announce, to make one more little information splash. Instead of making the existing features work perfectly and flawlessly on all released hardware in all conditions, they just throw another half-baked feature into the next release. I mean, it's what makes Tesla the coolest car out there: its functionality changes every couple of months. But it is also dangerous. It appears that in 16.2 Sentry Mode is majorly broken (to the point of affecting functionality of other vehicle functions i.e. EAP and HomeLink). Has Tesla released a bulletin telling users to avoid switching it on? No. But have we been informed about how cool the next Summon is going to be? You bet! It's gonna blow our minds.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

DocScott said:


> If they plagued every car 1% of the time, I'd be willing to call them "bugs." If they plagued cars with a certain firmware combined with certain hardware, or certain use cases, then yes, bugs.
> 
> It doesn't seem to be the pattern, though. Instead they affect some cars more than others but without seeming relation to manufacture date or version of the car (SR+, LWD, etc.) and last for one or more firmware updates, and then sometimes resolve themselves. I don't think most of them come from errors in the code which are then resolved.
> 
> ...


I had my camera go out for half a day even tried reboots. It just came back when it felt good and ready. Folks with lost bass also can't fix with reboot. Not sure if lost bass issue has been fixed. I stopped following it.

So many things going on it could be many different things. But my hunch is code is not handling some of the variability in the hardware. Like the Rear camera itself might "boot" on power up. And it might go through an "Auto ISO" step or some sort of self check. If it takes to long and some other code that sets, say brightness gets missed because the camera was still booting/self checking. That sort thing. That sort of stuff happens all the time. It could have a low priority monitor thread that checks camera settings are always correct, it sees brightness not set, does it again, poof camera comes on.


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## porkupan (Jul 24, 2018)

mswlogo said:


> I had my camera go out for half a day even tried reboots. It just came back when it felt good and ready.


You should report this problem to Tesla Service Center. If my experience is any guide, it's going to keep coming back more and more often. May be a bad "coax" cable that connects the camera to the central processor, or the camera itself is failing. They should be able to analyze and fix it at no cost to you. Maybe not on the first try, but eventually.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

porkupan said:


> This problem you should report to Tesla Service Center. If my experience is any guide, it's going to keep coming back more and more often. May be a bad "coax" cable that connects the camera to the central processor, or the camera itself is failing. They should be able to analyze and fix it at no cost to you. Maybe not on the first try, but eventually.


It didn't, it never did it again. That was months ago. Only sometimes get a delay for a couple seconds, most times no delay (like most folks are getting). I did factory reset on my car twice over the past few months though.

I try not to waste the Service Center's time. I've seen way to many instances of on going backup camera issue and I'm not going to let my car be a guinea pig for them to figure things out on even if it was a hardware failure.
I like to wait and see. Like the Charge port freezing. Some got replaced with the same charge port, some got a new locking pin, some got the new revision charge port. I waited and just got the new revision charge port.

I'm wondering now on the big back log on rear window cracked if there is a revision to the glass and I should have waited on that as well.
I "felt" lucky I got mine just before shortage, now I'm thinking I might have got the last "old revision" glass. Ugh. No idea really. But I figured I should get it replaced when they OK'd the coverage.

If it's not critical, I like to wait. Often better solutions come along, occasionally worse ones too.


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> Oddly enough you don't lose any of the station favorites etc. in the radio.
> All "settings" (Chill, Creep, NoA settings).
> All trip computers.
> It does not lose "Auto Pilot" calibration.
> ...


So I did the Factory Reset primarily to fix Homelink. It went from working great to working around 50% of the time to not working at all 
I reprogrammed my car and after a couple of tries it seems to be working like it did in the past . All of the items on your list are true. I did have to reprogram the radio presets. I very much appreciate your response.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

HCD3 said:


> So I did the Factory Reset primarily to fix Homelink. It went from working great to working around 50% of the time to not working at all
> I reprogrammed my car and after a couple of tries it seems to be working like it did in the past . All of the items on your list are true. I did have to reprogram the radio presets. I very much appreciate your response.


So is homelink back to "normal". Did it help your original homelink issue?


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Don't be surprised if you see additional homelink errors on this software. Seems to be a fairly widespread bug and simply rebooting the MCU has solved most of them at least for a few days. SW seems to have slowed down lately, maybe we'll have a new release with some fixes coming in it soon.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> Don't be surprised if you see additional homelink errors on this software. Seems to be a fairly widespread bug and simply rebooting the MCU has solved most of them at least for a few days. SW seems to have slowed down lately, maybe we'll have a new release with some fixes coming in it soon.


Homelink has worked fine for me. Including before and after a couple of factory resets. But perhaps yet another random issue that hits some folks and not others.


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> So is homelink back to "normal". Did it help your original homelink issue?


Pretty much mswlogo. It's not 100 % though. I still have to open or close from the screen sometimes . Frustrating.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

DocScott said:


> Totally agree with mswlogo's description of these "V9 demons."
> 
> I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Tesla should offer a way to reinstall the same firmware you're already on. (Only on wifi, of course!) That would give something to try for this kind of issue that would be a step short of a factory reset. If they're worried about overloading the servers, maybe limit it to one per car per firmware version--a second attempt (really a third, counting the first download) on the same version could trigger a message to contact Tesla support regarding any unresolved problems.


I don't think "reinstalling the same version" would help much. If your car says 16.2, you better have every single bit as 16.2. That is a slam dunk, no brainer to do these days. If they can't get that right we are in big trouble.

However, I do understand your desire. Sometimes "reinstalling" magically fixes stuff. It's not because you got a corrupt image and it's now fixed. It's because software like this usually has complex scripts that clean up caches, migrate etc. And those can have bugs too. Sometimes on a second pass something gets reset/cleaned that didn't quite get it on the first pass.

Allowing going backwards is usually nightmare for developers. They typically don't write code or test code to go backwards. What some systems will do, is they will allow it as long as you allow them to "factory reset". That eliminates reverse migration issues. Your basically starting with a clean slate on the "old version".

I know how complex migration is and that's why I like to occasionally factory reset complex systems like this. *A factory reset state is always the most tested* 
To be honest I have no idea if it has helped me at all. But I know it has helped numerous times on much less complex systems.

So back to your initial comment of "reinstall same version". You can indirectly do that now, in my humble opinion. It's called a factory reset. No, I know it's not reinstalling anything. But as I stated earlier getting you the correct bits better be a no brainer. Removing all the complex history of logs, caches, maybe some calibrations (many of which might get touched during installs/reinstalls) will all be squeaky clean on a factory reset.

But one disclaimer, we don't know really how "Deep" a factory reset is. But quite often it's something like, delete, delete, delete then run the "install checker script".

This post is just food for thought.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

HCD3 said:


> Pretty much mswlogo. It's not 100 % though. I still have to open or close from the screen sometimes . Frustrating.


I don't use the "GPS" automatic open/close feature. Is that where your issue is?

If that is your problem try "Teaching it" at the end of your driveway or a little further away from the garage door.

Let the car sit a few minutes (outside of garage) with an active route going so it gets a really good GPS Lock on your position.

It uses the location you teach it at (with a radius) to trigger when to open your door. You can delete entries and add them without factory reset.

Try it with the car in a few different places. Could be when your near the door your blocking a couple sats and a less than perfect GPS lock.
You might have had a better lock when trees were bare when you last did it. GPS can be a little fickle when you want it this tight.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I've been on 16.2 for a couple of weeks. I use auto open, but I do not use auto close. Mine has never failed to open automatically, but one day late last week as I was leaving the house it would not send the signal to close. I can't recreate the exact scenario of what it takes to replicate the bug, but reinstalling SW should have no bearing on something like this. It is just a certain set of events that likely creates the perfect storm (bug) and causes it to stop working. The bug doesn't hit everyone. I'll only say that whatever event it is a reboot cleared it for me and reinstalling SW will do nothing to help it or make it worse.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

@mswlogo thanks for starting this thread.

I've slogged thru all five pages and.....I do use NoA, but my amount of manual interventions increases hand in hand with the amount of traffic volume and traffic complexity.

So in my (computer ignorant) opinion, the hardware is already at its maximum capacity.

With NoA on lonely stretches of highway, it works reasonably well.

Any situational complexity added though, and my interventions go up, as well as my brain power ensuring I will not get rear ended if I'm being followed too closely.

I purposely use NoA and intervene, based on Musk saying (at autonomy day) that any intervention is looked at by the software development team.

I bug report every phantom braking issue.....and (as with any "significant situation" bug report) also send a detailed e-mail to Tesla (via 'feedback" in MyTesla account) to add context and a proposed "way it should behave because....." solution.

Interventions can include: steering out of the lane center when passing (or being passed); initiating speed changes to TACC via one kph at a time (similar to trimming an aircraft) to ensure passenger comfort when approaching complex traffic situations; changing lanes manually (when I want it to happen) to pass or to return to my original lane, etc.

In heavy urban settings (HWY 401 thru Toronto), I'm only using TACC, with speed change inputs being made constantly.

TACC alone is much more reliable (read less stressful) than watching NoA make stupid (or no) decisions that 20 seconds later leads to (at best) a "poor drivemanship" situation.

As an aside: I find I simply don't look at the UI when I'm driving.

So I can't judge if the blind spot warnings are peaking and freaking, or if the objects are bouncing around or not being rendered correctly.

I just drive with NoA and force it to drive logically and smoothly with numerous interventions.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

HCD3 said:


> Pretty much mswlogo. It's not 100 % though. I still have to open or close from the screen sometimes . Frustrating.


I've noticed for mine, the car needs to be pointed pretty straight on to the center of the garage to open the door. I don't know how the radio frequency of the opener works (i've always thought they were pretty much blanket broadcast sorts of things), but just based on how it reacts to the car vs the clicker remote, seems it has a pretty narrow path to reach the receiver.
Because my neighborhood has the roll-over curbs instead of curbcuts at the driveways, I approach the curb from an angle so a single tire hits the curb at a time, then need to straighten out and be pointed straight to the door by the time I get to the distance where Homelink wants to trigger for it to open. If I'm still pointed off at an angle, it will fail. (this has been this way since the beginning, so not specific to the latest FW releases).


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

HCD3 said:


> Pretty much mswlogo. It's not 100 % though. I still have to open or close from the screen sometimes . Frustrating.


I did another factory reset today  (some like to clean their car, I like to clean my computers).

I did notice that GPS is stubborn after a factory reset. In fact, I had to move the car before it would budge from headquarters as my location.

If you programmed your Homelink when in that state it would probably get your location to open your door wrong. Make sure GPS location is good before doing Home Link.

I also now recall that AutoPilot (or was it NoA I forget ) won't activate until it downloads some maps after a Factory Reset.
It does not take long, just setup Wifi first and set everything else up and by the time you get to the end the maps are loaded.

One difference I noticed. When Factory Reseting before I swear it listed 2 phones and 2 Key Cards after reset. This time the list is empty. But the 2 Phones and 1 KeyCard still all worked as it did for last factory reset.
I'm not sure if this is a security thing or a bug that it didn't list them. Because I don't know how you would remove them now.

Curious what other folks see on the Lock / Security page where it shows "Add Keys" on 16.2. Mine is empty. But all keys work. It might have been empty before I reset.
I tried a couple reboots and the list stays empty.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I don't think "reinstalling the same version" would help much. If your car says 16.2, you better have every single bit as 16.2. That is a slam dunk, no brainer to do these days. If they can't get that right we are in big trouble.
> 
> However, I do understand your desire. Sometimes "reinstalling" magically fixes stuff. It's not because you got a corrupt image and it's now fixed. It's because software like this usually has complex scripts that clean up caches, migrate etc. And those can have bugs too. Sometimes on a second pass something gets reset/cleaned that didn't quite get it on the first pass.
> 
> ...


I didn't mean that the image was necessarily corrupt. I think the problem is either that something doesn't go right in the startup (as you suggest), or, for AP problems, that something goes wrong during calibration. If you search through the threads, you'll find examples where someone was having problems, went to Tesla service, and Tesla service told them it was a "bad install," reinstalled for them, and, voila, the problems went away! So at least part of the time "bad installs" (meaning, most likely, that the startup scripts go wrong and/or the re-calibration goes wrong) do happen. I suspect the cases where someone goes to Tesla service rather than just waiting around and kvetching are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

This also isn't going backward. I'm not suggesting an option to revert to the previous version.

Reinstalling is different from a factory reset because you don't lose your settings. It's therefore one step less drastic.


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I did another factory reset today  (some like to clean their car, I like to clean my computers).
> 
> I did notice that GPS is stubborn after a factory reset. In fact, I had to move the car before it would budge from headquarters as my location.
> 
> ...


Thanks very much MSW. All my keys, cards, iPod, iPhone were still there. Homelink worked fine yesterday re the geolocation except for one instance where the screen showed a command being issued, but the door didn't open. Great comment on cleaning your computer. Did you get PPF for the keyboard. Sorry couldn't resist. Radio presets were gone, no biggie. And then there's ELDA. Until we get a firmware update to allow us to permanently shut it off it will continue to be a pain. I wish I could write a macro to turn it off before every drive. It's particularly annoying if I'm out on errands with many stops.


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## HCD3 (Mar 3, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I don't use the "GPS" automatic open/close feature. Is that where your issue is?
> 
> If that is your problem try "Teaching it" at the end of your driveway or a little further away from the garage door.
> 
> ...


Thanks MSW. I have set the distance to issue commands at 60 feet. Seems to work fine with a few times the commands don't work. What is troubling is that Homelink started to balk, then went to around 50% and finally didn't work at all. All after 16.2. I'm hoping this time that we don't go into Homelink failure again.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> I have my Jeep set to "most sensitive", it has never false braked in 90K miles. It has false warned a few times though.


This is my first car with adaptive cruise and emergency braking so I don't have much personal experience. But I feel like it's hard to compare other manufacturers products based on false positives alone. It may not have any false positives but it also may not prevent accidents. The safer you try to make it the harder it is to not have false positives. That's not to say one system can't be better than another but you need to look at sensitivity and specificity. If I look at NHTSA on the 2018 Jeep Cherokee it looks like it doesn't have crash imminent braking or it doesn't meet their standards/testing. And then I found this very unscientific Youtube video. You may have a different model, year, etc and I'm not trying to pick on Jeep. You may also prefer not to have phantom braking over increased safety. But it seems like safety should be considered when comparing systems.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

M3OC Rules said:


> This is my first car with adaptive cruise and emergency braking so I don't have much personal experience. But I feel like it's hard to compare other manufacturers products based on false positives alone. It may not have any false positives but it also may not prevent accidents. The safer you try to make it the harder it is to not have false positives. That's not to say one system can't be better than another but you need to look at sensitivity and specificity. If I look at NHTSA on the 2018 Jeep Cherokee it looks like it doesn't have crash imminent braking or it doesn't meet their standards/testing. And then I found this very unscientific Youtube video. You may have a different model, year, etc and I'm not trying to pick on Jeep. You may also prefer not to have phantom braking over increased safety. But it seems like safety should be considered when comparing systems.


It does, it's right on the link you provided. That link is a little confusing though. "These features have been either verified by NHTSA or reported by the vehicle manufacturers as meeting NHTSA's performance criteria" under that it's lists

Forward Collision Warning (optional)
Lane Departure Warning (optional)
Crash Imminent Braking
Dynamic Brake Support

Above that, it says "recommended safety options". I think it's because some are optional they are recommending you get those options. It's not a recommendation to the manufacturer or recommendation to you that you find another vehicle that has these technologies because this vehicle lacks them (which at glance, almost looks that way). The Jeep GC has had them since MY2014 (as options), Lane Assist (which is crap) was added 2017 (which is the year I have). Mine is the Summit so it has all the optional features. In 2014 they were all optional and didn't have Lane Assist. Most cars with ACC have "Crash Imminent Braking" (because it's all software on top of ACC).

The Dynamic Braking is pretty cool. If it sees impending doom, it will "Preload" the brakes first, so they react quicker when you go to use them (I think the warning, which is extremely CLEAR and LOUD, might happen at the same time). And if you don't hit the brakes hard enough, it will hit them harder for you. A lot of people have a hard time judging how hard to hit the brakes in emergency situations. So it knows your are trying to stop due to an obstacle ahead and makes sure it does it as aggressively as it can and it knows better than you do how aggressively it can stop (and it is still proportional, it's like a huge brake boost). This is probably one of the best features of crash (minimization) because it DOES minimize the false issue you raise. If you don't hit the brakes at all, it will, but it tries to give the driver every opportunity to manage it first. The Jeep might not compete with the best but it does a great job of not getting in the way and causing more trouble, like some cars we know. That said, I know of many complaints on Jeep forums that it has actively false braked on them even on minimum settings and they eventually shut it off (You can set sensitivity (early, late etc.) and as well as Active Brake, Warn Only or Off) . I have mine on maximum setting and it has never false braked. It has aggressively slowed from a car exiting a ramp while I'm in the right lane behind them and it catches the corner. I think it only does this with ACC active, I almost always have ACC on so I forget. They have improved the Crash Imminent Braking every couple years. Don't if 2018 is better than 2017. I think it's the same.

It's a little odd that "Forward Collision Warning" is optional and "Crash Imminent Braking" is standard because I thought they go hand in hand.

I don't think NHTSA officially tests these crash avoidance gadgets on every car yet, because they are not required yet. That's why it said they might just trust what manufacturer says in some cases, they might not have tested those features on this model at all (but very possibly on a previous year). So it's a little loosy goosy still. NHTSA loves the crash avoidance features and wants to make them required on all cars but I'm sure some manufactures are pushing to not make them required.

I bought the MY14 Limited without ACC (idiot) I even ordered that Jeep, I didn't realize I lost out on some nice safety features (I thought I just lost out on fancy cruise control). I traded for a MY15 Overland to get ACC and crash avoidance (best trade ever). Then they came out with Lane Assist and I traded for a MY17 Summit (I also wanted the Harmon Kardon 19 Speaker Radio with Noise Suppression), lost my shirt on that trade but no regrets (better audio than Model 3 and much quieter on the road and no phantom braking while on ACC).

Here is a better source for that info. 2017 Crash Prevention - Rated "Superior with Optional Equipment" (scroll way down)

https://m.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/Jeep/grand-cherokee-4-door-suv/2017


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## John (Apr 16, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> I did another factory reset today  (some like to clean their car, I like to clean my computers).
> 
> I did notice that GPS is stubborn after a factory reset. In fact, I had to move the car before it would budge from headquarters as my location.


Probably means a reset throws out the GPS satellite ephemeris and almanac data and starts over. Almanac information can take over 10 minutes to arrive slowly from satellites, and ephemeris data takes about 30 seconds (needed for each satellite used). Stored almanac (good for months) and ephemeris satellite info (good for hours) are what devices use to "warm start" and get a lock quickly. With no almanac data and too few satellites currently unobstructed, getting a first fix can take a while.

As a side note, there have a been a number of unhappy drone owners in the past who opened their drone, powered it on, started flying, and lost their drone because it had no GPS fix yet.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> That link is a little confusing though.


It is confusing. I guess I assumed it didn't have it because when I look at other cars like the Model 3 it has the checkmark with Standard.

I ran across this Car and Driver article that discusses this topic and compares some cars. "Avery explains that manufacturers also face a challenge in deciding whether the system should intervene if there's a possibility that the driver intends to steer around a stopped car or that the vehicle might move out of the way. Along those lines, carmakers are also rightfully self-conscious of how often an AEB system acts on a false positive, with the computer applying the brakes in the absence of a threat. In 2015, NHTSA opened a yearlong investigation into 95,000 Jeep Grand Cherokees following reports that the SUVs were braking for no reason. The probe turned up 176 complaints of inexplicable emergency braking, but the agency found no defects and ultimately decided not to issue a recall. For the moment, these annoyances simply have to be tolerated by automakers and their customers. "From a technological perspective, if you'd like to reduce the rate of false positives, the rate of false negatives [crashes in which AEB does not activate] has to go up, and vice versa," says Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab."

Hopefully, the complaints led to Jeep improving their system and it's not zero-sum like they are suggesting. Maybe the same will happen with Tesla.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

M3OC Rules said:


> It is confusing. I guess I assumed it didn't have it because when I look at other cars like the Model 3 it has the checkmark with Standard.
> 
> I ran across this Car and Driver article that discusses this topic and compares some cars. "Avery explains that manufacturers also face a challenge in deciding whether the system should intervene if there's a possibility that the driver intends to steer around a stopped car or that the vehicle might move out of the way. Along those lines, carmakers are also rightfully self-conscious of how often an AEB system acts on a false positive, with the computer applying the brakes in the absence of a threat. In 2015, NHTSA opened a yearlong investigation into 95,000 Jeep Grand Cherokees following reports that the SUVs were braking for no reason. The probe turned up 176 complaints of inexplicable emergency braking, but the agency found no defects and ultimately decided not to issue a recall. For the moment, these annoyances simply have to be tolerated by automakers and their customers. "From a technological perspective, if you'd like to reduce the rate of false positives, the rate of false negatives [crashes in which AEB does not activate] has to go up, and vice versa," says Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab."
> 
> Hopefully, the complaints led to Jeep improving their system and it's not zero-sum like they are suggesting. Maybe the same will happen with Tesla.


If the investigation was issued in 2015 it was probably based on 2014 Model year which was the first year, and that is the year I missed getting the option.
I have seen less complaints over the years on the forums. Jeep has upgraded the system twice since 2014 (if not every year through software). The system is designed by Bosch, when I last looked.

I wonder if we will see similar investigations for Model 3 phantom braking. Because it's an order of magnitude worse, right now, in my experience. And the ACC is smother too (on the Jeep that is).


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## rdskill (Apr 2, 2019)

Model 3 with EAP. v2016.16.2 Auto Wipers were useless in todays semi-heavy rain which, means looking down at the screen instead of the road and hoping I don't hit a bump section of the road and miss the wiper icon completely. Had to go to manual. Even when they decide to work, they always wait too long and my vision is obscured to the point that if there was something in the road I would not see it in time, or not at all. It's that bad.


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## Sjohnson20 (Mar 8, 2018)

My wipers work fine in heavy rain but when there is mist they do nothing.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

rdskill said:


> Model 3 with EAP. v2016.16.2 Auto Wipers were useless in todays semi-heavy rain


Try putting a hydrophobic coating (ex - RainX) on your windshield. It makes a world of difference.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

rdskill said:


> Model 3 with EAP. v2016.16.2 Auto Wipers were useless in todays semi-heavy rain which, means looking down at the screen instead of the road and hoping I don't hit a bump section of the road and miss the wiper icon completely. Had to go to manual. Even when they decide to work, they always wait too long and my vision is obscured to the point that if there was something in the road I would not see it in time, or not at all. It's that bad.


To confirm: you are aware you can tap the button at the end of the wiper stalk for a single swipe.......I know it's not a solution, but you can keep tapping it until road conditions are such you can look at the UI to tap them on........


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## SalisburySam (Jun 6, 2018)

garsh said:


> Try putting a hydrophobic coating (ex - RainX) on your windshield. It makes a world of difference.


Do you mean the AutoWiper works better, or that you don't need the wipers at all as much?


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

SalisburySam said:


> Do you mean the AutoWiper works better, or that you don't need the wipers at all as much?


both.

I've said since day 1 that my only issue with auto wipers is they wipe too frequently if anything. 
With a hydrophobic glass coating, first instead of the water blurring your vision, the water beads up and you see right thru it, even if heavily raining. Second, at speeds of 30mph+, the wind blows the water off the glass. Third, the cameras are still tracking water on the glass, and it activates with the rain drops - if blurred or beaded up. 
give it a try. If you don't like it, it can be stripped off.
only 'issues' with hydrophobic coatings is the first day or so the excess coating will mess with the wipers and cause chatter (wipe the blades down with alcohol and all will be back to normal), and you have to re-apply it when the wipers begin to wear thru it (depends on frequency of wiper use, wipers used on dirty window, etc).


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## rdskill (Apr 2, 2019)

garsh said:


> Try putting a hydrophobic coating (ex - RainX) on your windshield. It makes a world of difference.


I am not a rainX fan after having some issues with it years ago with the film it leaves.

I see it is not recommend in the owner's manual either. On page 141 of the Model 3 manual...

Caution: Do not add formulated washer​fluids that contain water repellent or bug​wash. These fluids can cause streaking,​smearing, and squeaking or other noises.​​


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## rdskill (Apr 2, 2019)

Mike said:


> To confirm: you are aware you can tap the button at the end of the wiper stalk for a single swipe.......I know it's not a solution, but you can keep tapping it until road conditions are such you can look at the UI to tap them on........


yes... I tap the hell out of it. At least its a tad easier then bumping the wiper stalk on my 2013 Prius.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

rdskill said:


> I am not a rainX fan after having some issues with it years ago with the film it leaves.
> 
> I see it is not recommend in the owner's manual either. On page 141 of the Model 3 manual...
> 
> Caution: Do not add formulated washer​fluids that contain water repellent or bug​wash. These fluids can cause streaking,​smearing, and squeaking or other noises.​​


again, this is not what the manual is advising against. it is saying not to use the 'formulated washer fluids".


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

rdskill said:


> I am not a rainX fan after having some issues with it years ago with the film it leaves.


Then try another brand. But please try something.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

None of my other cars with auto wipers ever needed Rain-X or similar to function.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

I'm too lazy to do this, but could someone whose auto-wipers don't go fast enough in pouring rain please link to a video showing that, so that those whose auto-wipers go too fast can see what we're talking about?

It's absolutely clear that the behavior of the auto-wipers is dramatically different from car to car. Yes, people have different tastes as to how sensitive they want the wipers to be, but there's absolutely no way that anyone would think of my experience of wiping so anemic that if I didn't use manual override I couldn't read a speed limit sign through all the water on the windshield and say that it was wiping too much! It's got to be that there's something different about the individual sensors from car to car--e.g., alignment.

If that's the case, then Tesla is never going to fix it by tweaking the neural net. Instead, there needs to be a way the owner can control sensitivity, either by a simple setting or by having their car learn based on button presses. That way, even if the sensors in different cars are behaving differently, we could all get more or less the behavior we want.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> None of my other cars with auto wipers ever needed Rain-X or similar to function.


which of your other cars with autowipers used cameras to control them?


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

When it comes to auto-wipers, I often wonder whether the Model 3's exceptional aerodynamics are actually an impairment.

Whenever I feel like auto-wipers aren't keeping up with the rain, I glance over to the top-middle of the windshield where the autopilot cameras are mounted, so that I'm considering what the car sees versus what I see. Oftentimes, I don't actually see much water on that part of the windshield, especially with light rain or road spray at speeds over 40 mph. It's as though lighter precipitation at that altitude tends to get pulled into the airstream going over the roof, and doesn't have much of a chance to stick to the windshield where the cameras can pick it up.

FWIW, I had a similar issue on my e-Golf (which had a traditional infrared rain sensor and a 0.27 Cd)... I was constantly adjusting the sensitivity switch depending on the speed I was traveling at, which is the same experience I'd have if I were using non-automatic wipers.

I don't know whether Tesla's auto-wipers currently take speed or other non-camera inputs into account, but I think they either need to make their modeling more sophisticated, or simply provide the driver with a means to adjust sensitivity without taking their eyes off the road.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

rdskill said:


> I am not a rainX fan after having some issues with it years ago with the film it leaves.
> 
> I see it is not recommend in the owner's manual either. On page 141 of the Model 3 manual...
> 
> Caution: Do not add formulated washer​fluids that contain water repellent or bug​wash. These fluids can cause streaking,​smearing, and squeaking or other noises.​​


I highly recommend aquapel over Rain-X. Performs better, lasts a year instead of a month, and doesn't haze the glass. Although I will say you would need to apple very very fast if you want to cover the whole roof...

Also, there are further wiper software improvements on the way. Waiting for some rain to confirm


----------



## TDLI (Jun 6, 2018)

Anyone know when is HW3 rollout?


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> which of your other cars with autowipers used cameras to control them?


Which of my other cars would be crazy enough to use the cameras. I don't know exactly what my other cars use, but they work. And on both of them I can adjust how sensitive I want it.

I do hope they eventually get fixed. And I expect it will need the HW3 super computer to do it.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> I do hope they eventually get fixed. And I expect it will need the HW3 super computer to do it.


Adding a sensitivity setting wouldn't require HW3...


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## Unplugged (Apr 5, 2016)

My 2 cents on phantom braking. I have stretches of freeway where TACC is impossible to use. This is when I am on the 91 Express Lanes in SoCal. The two express lanes are separated from regular traffic by plastic poles. If the traffic in the regular lanes slow, the Model 3 somehow freaks out and panic brakes. I can't use NoA, because it wants to be in the right lane. Interestingly, if I use NoA with a carpool preference, it moves to the left and stays out of the lane next to stopped traffic. But NoA, I presume, can't be used when the Tesla in one lane is traveling much faster than the lane next to it. If someone has a contrary experience, let me know. Maybe one of my cameras is malfunctioning or out of alignment.

As an aside, some in SoCal may not realize that transponders are free (they work for all of California) and 91 Express Lanes are mostly free (excepting rush hour where it is half-off) for EVs. Just EVs, not plug in hybrids. Apply to the 91 Express Lanes authority for a Special Access plan, starting here: https://www.91expresslanes.com/getting-started/

[removed]


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Yeah I tried just AutoPilot this weekend again (16.2). Drove up to destination 150 miles at night, no Phantom Braking. Drove back in bright sun, it Phantom Braked once on a bridge. No other cars around.
Surprised it only did it that once though.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I've reported no phantom breaking events in months, so to be honest, I had one on the way home Friday. The first one ever in this car. The other car hasn't had on in months. It was a different time of day and I was passing under an overpass.


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## webdriverguy (May 25, 2017)

JWardell said:


> I'm not sure what you are expecting. NOA frankly does a lot better job than any other human that has only been driving for six months. It's downright impressive what it can do. OF COURSE it has a hard time with difficult situations, like merging into very competitive Massachusetts traffic. Just like any teenager. It probably works well in 90% of highways worldwide. But we live in a very special crazy driving place. Surely you must be aware and understanding of that. Surely you must be smart enough not to expect early versions of AI to be able to handle this stuff perfectly. Even experienced humans can't.
> 
> If you want a perfect experience from NOA, then only use it on open highways with light traffic. Have some patience and watch it improve slowly over the next year or two.
> 
> ...


Sorry I have to disagree when you said "NOA frankly does a lot better job than any other human that has only been driving for six months." In my experience this is not true at all, infact not even close. However I am going to patiently wait and see the system improve over time. For now using NOA does not make sense. TACC is much less stressful.


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## nonStopSwagger (May 7, 2018)

I'm still holding out hope Tesla release regular old cruise control. The phantom braking on the roads where I drive is getting old.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

If this article is any indication we're in for more phantom braking not less. Cruise was braking 10 times per 10 miles for a test period of 30,000 miles. And not much better over the last year.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

M3OC Rules said:


> If this article is any indication we're in for more phantom braking not less. Cruise was braking 10 times per 10 miles for a test period of 30,000 miles. And not much better over the last year.


Why would their struggle be tied to Tesla's. I do believe things will get better with HW3 and probably a year of optimizing code for it. Just not sure how much better they could be with current hardware.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

M3OC Rules said:


> If this article is any indication we're in for more phantom braking not less. Cruise was braking 10 times per 10 miles for a test period of 30,000 miles. And not much better over the last year.


Business Insider is one of the more well know Tesla FUDers, so take their info with a grain of salt.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

M3OC Rules said:


> If this article is any indication we're in for more phantom braking not less. Cruise was braking 10 times per 10 miles for a test period of 30,000 miles. And not much better over the last year.


This sort of casts doubt on the "autonomy requires LIDAR" argument. Tesla AP clearly is not causing passenger discomfort by maneuvers such as sudden braking an average of once a mile! Distinguishing between the need for real braking and a shadow is the kind of thing that LIDAR is supposed to be good at. So if the LIDAR-equipped cars aren't doing that well, then it shows that Tesla's software is so far ahead that it's making up for having a smaller suite of hardware.

On the other hand, I'm still skeptical that HW3 and further software iterations of the kind they've been doing will solve all of Tesla's phantom braking problems. I think Tesla may need to incorporate an approach where each individual car tweaks its own neural net, perhaps with a more formal and intentional calibration routine (e.g. something that would have to be done at a service center or perhaps by mobile service). Otherwise the incidental differences in sensors from one car to the next (e.g. a scratch on a camera window or a slight difference in alignment) might be an unsolvable problem.

My prediction is that eventually we'll need a protocol where Teslas have yearly "eye exams." Each sensor (camera, radar, ultrasonic) will be presented with standard stimuli and that information used to calibrate and adjust the car's AP.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

MelindaV said:


> Business Insider is one of the more well know Tesla FUDers, so take their info with a grain of salt.


This was from a hit piece on Cruise that originated from The Information I think. It's paywalled though so I didn't link that one. But ya, FUDsters were a large topic of conversation at the Investors meeting yesterday.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> Why would their struggle be tied to Tesla's. I do believe things will get better with HW3 and probably a year of optimizing code for it. Just not sure how much better they could be with current hardware.


Ya. It may not be a good comparison. Cruise is mainly in San Francisco I believe so their braking is probably mostly on streets versus the highway/freeway. But if Tesla releases their Autopilot for streets later this year like they say they will I wouldn't be surprised if the complaints about phantom braking start going up. I think their priority is adding functionality. Elon Musk talks about Navigate on Autopilot as if it's finished. Yesterday he said they were working on curb detection. Maybe they see the phantom braking as a training issue that will resolve over time.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

M3OC Rules said:


> Ya. It may not be a good comparison. Cruise is mainly in San Francisco I believe so their braking is probably mostly on streets versus the highway/freeway. But if Tesla releases their Autopilot for streets later this year like they say they will I wouldn't be surprised if the complaints about phantom braking start going up. I think their priority is adding functionality. Elon Musk talks about Navigate on Autopilot as if it's finished. Yesterday he said they were working on curb detection. Maybe they see the phantom braking as a *training issue* that will resolve over time.


I think it is a training issue too, but I'm concerned it might take HW3 frame rates to deploy it.
If it is just training, I would think it would have been resolved by now. It's been going on a long time. It might likely be a dozen different cases that need 100's of markups though.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

For those that don't believe phantom braking is a serious problem.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Indeed it needs attention and no doubt an issue, but I'd have to say it looks like the semi might be way closer than he should be for that speed. Barely a road stripe behind the 3, way too close for highway speeds. It's nearly impossible to know and tell for sure the speed, but travelling distance between cars will help. There is no way you get the two second rule there, I'm going to say not even .5.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> Indeed it needs attention and no doubt an issue, but I'd have to say it looks like the semi might be was closer than he should be for that speed. Barely a road stripe behind the 3, way too close for highway speeds. It's nearly impossible to know and tell for sure the speed, but travelling distance between cars will help. There is no way you get the two second rule there, I'm going to say not even .5.


BTW that's not my Video.

I agree that's the first thing I noticed too that the truck was way to close to begin with. But you can't always control that stuff or always catch it. That truck driver sure was alert though and was smart to switch to the other lane in case he couldn't stop in time. But he could have lost control too.

You can also see the shadow on the road that TACC got tripped up by. I was expecting it at the bridge but it was the shadow from the sign before it, I believe.

You can also tell TACC doesn't care what's behind you when it slams on the brakes.

If Elon doesn't do something soon, the NHTSA will do it for him.

Pretty soon the Semi's will be ICEing us.


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

mswlogo said:


> You can also see the shadow on the road that TACC got tripped up by. I was expecting it at the bridge but it was the shadow from the sign before it, I believe.


Yeah, it looks as though the braking incident happened when the camera saw the sign's shadow "come out of" the vehicle it was following, and concluded that this vehicle was braking. Radar should have been able to confirm whether this was the case (and likely would have triggered the collision warning if it had been able to do so), but apparently the image of the shadow alone was enough for Autopilot to apply the brakes out of caution.

I'd love to see an Autopilot video overlay (of the sort Green likes to do on Twitter) for one of these incidents, just to see what it looks like through Autopilot's eyes. I'd also hope that the Autopilot team has the ability to construct a similar view from footage and telemetry... ideally the sort that is automatically reported when these incidents occur, similar to "driver takeover" events...


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Bokonon said:


> Yeah, it looks as though the braking incident happened when the camera saw the sign's shadow "come out of" the vehicle it was following, and concluded that this vehicle was braking. Radar should have been able to confirm whether this was the case (and likely would have triggered the collision warning if it had been able to do so), but apparently the image of the shadow alone was enough for Autopilot to apply the brakes out of caution.
> 
> I'd love to see an Autopilot video overlay (of the sort Green likes to do on Twitter) for one of these incidents, just to see what it looks like through Autopilot's eyes. I'd also hope that the Autopilot team has the ability to construct a similar view from footage and telemetry... ideally the sort that is automatically reported when these incidents occur, similar to "driver takeover" events...


I'd be really disturbed if Tesla doesn't know all about this issue. I think enough people see it routinely to easily repeat and train.

Only thing that is different in this Video is there was a Semi two cars lengths behind it. Which was not the root of the problem. Braking for shadows happens way to often.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

GDN said:


> Indeed it needs attention and no doubt an issue, but I'd have to say it looks like the semi might be way closer than he should be for that speed. Barely a road stripe behind the 3, way too close for highway speeds. It's nearly impossible to know and tell for sure the speed, but travelling distance between cars will help. There is no way you get the two second rule there, I'm going to say not even .5.


Agreed.

But unfortunately in the driving I do around here, this is standard practice.

When I'm being followed that close on the freeway, I always de-couple from autopilot.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> I'd be really disturbed if Tesla doesn't know all about this issue. I think enough people see it routinely to easily repeat and train.
> 
> Only thing that is different in this Video is there was a Semi two cars lengths behind it. Which was not the root of the problem. Braking for shadows happens way to often.


Tesla knows better than any other manufacturer. During their FSD presentation, the last guy said he has reviewed every single accident. We know they look at near misses as well. That video is a great example that it can cause accidents, but its also possible it hasn't or very few. It also would be the semi's fault in that case. That doesn't mean its not a problem but they are publishing accident rates with Autopilot on versus off and the accidents from this may not be a priority from a statistical point of view. Also if you're designing the system you want to err on the side of safety. I have seen several accidents where the car drove into something like the fire truck on the road or a barrier on the freeway. Those sell a lot of news. But that video of the semi was the first phantom braking incident I've seen. And it didn't result in an accident. Regardless of that, I think its a problem from a user experience point of view. I certainly have thought about whether the possibility of it phantom braking into an accident makes it less safe than me driving. And then having your heart skip a beat when it starts slowing is not super awesome. Elon has said they worry about the steering wheel nag causing people to use autopilot less resulting in more accidents. This also results in people using autopilot less which causes more accidents. Maybe more than phantom braking itself.

Ironically the one accident I was in that was 100% my fault was the result of people braking for shadows(entering a short tunnel well before radar cruise control) and would not have occurred if I was using autopilot (or any other car with radar cruise.)


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

M3OC Rules said:


> Tesla knows better than any other manufacturer. During their FSD presentation, the last guy said he has reviewed every single accident. We know they look at near misses as well. That video is a great example that it can cause accidents, but its also possible it hasn't or very few. It also would be the semi's fault in that case. That doesn't mean its not a problem but they are publishing accident rates with Autopilot on versus off and the accidents from this may not be a priority from a statistical point of view. Also if you're designing the system you want to err on the side of safety. I have seen several accidents where the car drove into something like the fire truck on the road or a barrier on the freeway. Those sell a lot of news. But that video of the semi was the first phantom braking incident I've seen. And it didn't result in an accident. Regardless of that, I think its a problem from a user experience point of view. I certainly have thought about whether the possibility of it phantom braking into an accident makes it less safe than me driving. And then having your heart skip a beat when it starts slowing is not super awesome. Elon has said they worry about the steering wheel nag causing people to use autopilot less resulting in more accidents. This also results in people using autopilot less which causes more accidents. Maybe more than phantom braking itself.
> 
> Ironically the one accident I was in that was 100% my fault was the result of people braking for shadows(entering a short tunnel well before radar cruise control) and would not have occurred if I was using autopilot (or any other car with radar cruise.)


Are they publishing all the accidents avoided by folks smart enough to stop using it? Or the stats when users canceling it at every bridge shadow or canceling it when cars/trucks are traveling to close behind? And taking credit for the HUMAN that is making judgement of only using it when it's "safe" (or safer) to use.

The problem is the data they are collecting is very biased.

The only way to truly get a measurement of how good it is would be to not let humans intervene.

They are implicitly getting "cherry picked" data. I suspect they know this. And I suspect there is in house testing that less intervening happens to get more accurate data. Public data is very uncontrolled.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> Are they publishing all the accidents avoided by folks smart enough to stop using it? Or the stats when users canceling it at every bridge shadow or canceling it when cars/trucks are traveling to close behind? And taking credit for the HUMAN that is making judgement of only using it when it's "safe" (or safer) to use.
> 
> The problem is the data they are collecting is very biased.
> 
> ...


I agree that the data they publish is very limited and more marketing driven than science driven. 2 points though. The data is showing the safety of the system as it is. So people are supposed to intervene. If autopilot is on you have to have TACC on so if it increased accidents significantly presumably it would show up in their published data which is bad for them. The more important point is that Tesla should have very good data on the safety of this when they are making decisions. We're doing a bunch of speculation. If we had the data we may still disagree with them but at least they should be making informed decisions.


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## MNScott (Mar 16, 2019)

Phantom braking was a myth to me...until it wasn't. Scared the crap out of me, was quite aggressive and I'm just lucky there was nobody close behind me. Driver should not need to cringe every time we come up to an overpass or signage over the road. I did bug reports the few times it has happened to me. Even if it does it 1 out of 1000 times - it's too much. Then Tesla says that FSD is "coming soon" and wants $5k-$7k of my money. Nope. Not until you can show me that the stuff I've already purchased can work. All. The. Time.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

MNScott said:


> Phantom braking was a myth to me...until it wasn't. Scared the crap out of me, was quite aggressive and I'm just lucky there was nobody close behind me. Driver should not need to cringe every time we come up to an overpass or signage over the road. I did bug reports the few times it has happened to me. Even if it does it 1 out of 1000 times - it's too much. Then Tesla says that FSD is "coming soon" and wants $5k-$7k of my money. Nope. Not until you can show me that the stuff I've already purchased can work. All. The. Time.


Exactly. The LDA/ELDA issues folks complain about are a "myth" to me too. Until....


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## Klaus-rf (Mar 6, 2019)

Had an interesting alarm / alert today. On 4-lane divided 45 MPH roadway with bike lane on right. Driving in right traffic lane. Using AP with TACC set to 47. First set of bicycles I passed AP didn't seem to notice - don't know if they showed up on the animated screen. I noticed, as usual, that AP still insisted on driving down the center of the lane while passing bikes. The AZ state law says we must leave 5 feet clearance.

I forced auto-steer off before passing the next [single] bike on the right to add more room while leaving TACC on. I was at least 7 feet away from the single bike. Car starts panic beeping / alerting as if I was about to hit something.

Didn't seem to care when AP was taking the car within 3 feet of bikes.

Unpredictable and inconsistent.


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## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

Klaus-rf said:


> Had an interesting alarm / alert today. On 4-lane divided 45 MPH roadway with bike lane on right. Driving in right traffic lane. Using AP with TACC set to 47. First set of bicycles I passed AP didn't seem to notice - don't know if they showed up on the animated screen. I noticed, as usual, that AP still insisted on driving down the center of the lane while passing bikes. The AZ state law says we must leave 5 feet clearance.
> 
> I forced auto-steer off before passing the next [single] bike on the right to add more room while leaving TACC on. I was at least 7 feet away from the single bike. Car starts panic beeping / alerting as if I was about to hit something.
> 
> ...


Maybe it saw something on the left.


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## Klaus-rf (Mar 6, 2019)

mswlogo said:


> Maybe it saw something on the left.


 T'was an empty lane - no bridges, signs, shadows, vehicles, (could have been some over head birds though).. I hit the Camera / save button and will review the camera data later on.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

mswlogo said:


> Are they publishing all the accidents avoided by folks smart enough to stop using it? Or the stats when users canceling it at every bridge shadow or canceling it when cars/trucks are traveling to close behind? And taking credit for the HUMAN that is making judgement of only using it when it's "safe" (or safer) to use.
> 
> The problem is the data they are collecting is very biased.
> 
> ...


You have hit the nail on the head.

This all goes back to my old RCAF days and the concept of what was then called ****pit resource management (CRA) as it applies to studying aircraft accidents OR incidents.

The root cause of the incident of the large truck having to slam on the brakes and change lanes to avoid a crash is the phantom braking episode.

Had an actual accident occurred, an indentified contributing factor would have been the following distance between the truck and the phantom braking Tesla.

This one example of a core flaw of autopilot, phantom braking, has been hidden, statistically, because the intervention of the truck driver is not recorded by Tesla.

Until CRA techniques are applied to the near miss incidents, the product we are using will not improve to the point where in ALL scenarios it can correctly claim to be safer than human drivers.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Klaus-rf said:


> Had an interesting alarm / alert today. On 4-lane divided 45 MPH roadway with bike lane on right. Driving in right traffic lane. Using AP with TACC set to 47. First set of bicycles I passed AP didn't seem to notice - don't know if they showed up on the animated screen. I noticed, as usual, that AP still insisted on driving down the center of the lane while passing bikes. The AZ state law says we must leave 5 feet clearance.
> 
> I forced auto-steer off before passing the next [single] bike on the right to add more room while leaving TACC on. I was at least 7 feet away from the single bike. Car starts panic beeping / alerting as if I was about to hit something.
> 
> ...


My broken record rant: until autopilot stops pedantically staying in the middle of a lane under all circumstances, it will never be ready for the real world......


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

My question on the AP safety statistics is whether "accident occurred while on AP" includes being on AP a few seconds before. For example, suppose AP steers the car toward a barrier. The driver sees, and torques the wheel, disengaging AP, but not in time, and still hits the barrier. Technically, the car was under driver control when the collision occurred. But it is also clear that AP was involved in the circumstances of the accident. Reporting that as an accident while _not_ on AP would be misleading.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

Mike said:


> You have hit the nail on the head.
> 
> This all goes back to my old RCAF days and the concept of what was then called ****pit resource management (CRA) as it applies to studying aircraft accidents OR incidents.
> 
> ...


Tesla does not give us the data they have. They have said they do not give it out because it will be used against them. I don't think anyone can argue with that. But that doesn't mean they aren't using the data themselves to make the cars safer. How do you know what Tesla is recording and how they handle that data? They do specifically say they look at near misses.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

M3OC Rules said:


> Tesla does not give us the data they have. They have said they do not give it out because it will be used against them. I don't think anyone can argue with that. But that doesn't mean they aren't using the data themselves to make the cars safer. How do you know what Tesla is recording and how they handle that data? They do specifically say they look at near misses.


I don't dispute what you are saying.

I do dispute the assumption that the truck drivers evasive actions were somehow captured and forwarded to the Tesla cloud for analysis.


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## aresal (Apr 23, 2019)

Unplugged said:


> My 2 cents on phantom braking. I have stretches of freeway where TACC is impossible to use. This is when I am on the 91 Express Lanes in SoCal. The two express lanes are separated from regular traffic by plastic poles. If the traffic in the regular lanes slow, the Model 3 somehow freaks out and panic brakes. I can't use NoA, because it wants to be in the right lane. Interestingly, if I use NoA with a carpool preference, it moves to the left and stays out of the lane next to stopped traffic. But NoA, I presume, can't be used when the Tesla in one lane is traveling much faster than the lane next to it. If someone has a contrary experience, let me know. Maybe one of my cameras is malfunctioning or out of alignment.
> 
> As an aside, some in SoCal may not realize that transponders are free (they work for all of California) and 91 Express Lanes are mostly free (excepting rush hour where it is half-off) for EVs. Just EVs, not plug in hybrids. Apply to the 91 Express Lanes authority for a Special Access plan, starting here: https://www.91expresslanes.com/getting-started/
> 
> [removed]


Expresslanes no longer free for CAVs: https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/faq/clean_air_vehicles.shtml


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

Mike said:


> I do dispute the assumption that the truck drivers evasive actions were somehow captured and forwarded to the Tesla cloud for analysis.


How do you know that?

On Ride The Lightning podcast this week Ryan said Elon mentioned something about shadows on the E3 interview. I listened to most of that but must have missed it. Anyway, they could certainly automate capturing phantom braking events and near misses.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

M3OC Rules said:


> How do you know that?
> 
> On Ride The Lightning podcast this week Ryan said Elon mentioned something about shadows on the E3 interview. I listened to most of that but must have missed it. Anyway, they could certainly automate capturing phantom braking events and near misses.


The phantom-braking-with-no-regard-to-what-the-following-distance/closure-rate-of-the-trailing-vehicle issue has existed, with zero improvement, since I took delivery 13 months ago.

That is what I base my point of view on, 13 months of experianced stagnation on this issue.

When this issue appreciably improves, I'll be the first to acknowledge that events behind the vehicle are now being considered prior to autopilot or TACC radically decelerating for no driver dicernable reason.


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## Misanthropic Mike (May 17, 2019)

As humans, the way we drive is we abstract visual information into a conceptual model of the world around us, and continually refine this model as new observation becomes available. When we gain information in conflict with this model, this causes a negative feedback in the form of an unpleasant sensation we refer to as "surprise". In this way, our neural networks continuously improve the accuracy of their models in order to minimize the number of surprises we encounter. Using this model and a basic understanding of physics, laws, and the characteristics of our cars and the other cars and drivers around us, we plan what we judge to be a safe and efficient path up to the limit of our visual horizon. A part of this planning involves prediction; when we approach a merge, we understand that the other cars we see around us will soon share a lane, and that we must position ourselves so that don't try to occupy the same space well in advance. In principle, the computational neural networks in the FSD computer must replicate this functionality in order to safely drive a vehicle. 

If you pay any attention to the car's behavior, it is clear that the car is performing a very simple operation of keeping itself between the lines and behind other cars; it skips the entire model building and refining step. As an example, the car attempts to remain perfectly centered between the lines, even when lanes are merging. A human driver would look at the approaching merge, identify it as such, and plan a path through the area well in advance, while the autopilot computer doesn't seem to know about the merge until the moment it happens, immediately jumping to the new center as soon as the adjacent line disappears. If the lines are painted incorrectly and waver back and forth a bit in mid corner, the autopilot will follow the lines and and the car will also waver, whereas a human would have planned the entire route through the visual horizon of the corner with the understanding that it was unnecessary to follow the wiggly lines exactly as long as the car was positioned well between the lines. Even the infotainment screen showing other vehicles around the car belies a complete lack of abstraction capability; the cars surrounding you move in erratic ways which we know to violate the laws of physics. I'm certain that our brain's inputs are just as noisy as the cars inputs are, but we build and refine a model of what must be there in a method somewhat reminiscent of a kalman filter in controls theory. We know the cars aren't bouncing all over the road even if our eyes and our ears provide conflicting inputs, because cars can't do that... the occasional glance is all that is needed to compare our model of where we expected the car to be at this moment based on prior observation to current observation, and refine our model of that object. So far, the FSD computer just can't do this.

The computer isn't so much driving as it is following a painted railroad track, something which requires no abstraction at all. There is a 0% chance of self driving ever functioning properly without the ability


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

Misanthropic Mike said:


> As humans, the way we drive is we abstract visual information into a conceptual model of the world around us, and continually refine this model as new observation becomes available. When we gain information in conflict with this model, this causes a negative feedback in the form of an unpleasant sensation we refer to as "surprise". In this way, our neural networks continuously improve the accuracy of their models in order to minimize the number of surprises we encounter. Using this model and a basic understanding of physics, laws, and the characteristics of our cars and the other cars and drivers around us, we plan what we judge to be a safe and efficient path up to the limit of our visual horizon. A part of this planning involves prediction; when we approach a merge, we understand that the other cars we see around us will soon share a lane, and that we must position ourselves so that don't try to occupy the same space well in advance. In principle, the computational neural networks in the FSD computer must replicate this functionality in order to safely drive a vehicle.
> 
> If you pay any attention to the car's behavior, it is clear that the car is performing a very simple operation of keeping itself between the lines and behind other cars; it skips the entire model building and refining step. As an example, the car attempts to remain perfectly centered between the lines, even when lanes are merging. A human driver would look at the approaching merge, identify it as such, and plan a path through the area well in advance, while the autopilot computer doesn't seem to know about the merge until the moment it happens, immediately jumping to the new center as soon as the adjacent line disappears. If the lines are painted incorrectly and waver back and forth a bit in mid corner, the autopilot will follow the lines and and the car will also waver, whereas a human would have planned the entire route through the visual horizon of the corner with the understanding that it was unnecessary to follow the wiggly lines exactly as long as the car was positioned well between the lines. Even the infotainment screen showing other vehicles around the car belies a complete lack of abstraction capability; the cars surrounding you move in erratic ways which we know to violate the laws of physics. I'm certain that our brain's inputs are just as noisy as the cars inputs are, but we build and refine a model of what must be there in a method somewhat reminiscent of a kalman filter in controls theory. We know the cars aren't bouncing all over the road even if our eyes and our ears provide conflicting inputs, because cars can't do that... the occasional glance is all that is needed to compare our model of where we expected the car to be at this moment based on prior observation to current observation, and refine our model of that object. So far, the FSD computer just can't do this.
> 
> The computer isn't so much driving as it is following a painted railroad track, something which requires no abstraction at all. There is a 0% chance of self driving ever functioning properly without the ability


There are cases, though, where AP is clearly using a model of the kind you're referring to, albeit a fairly simple one.

One notable example is when a car changes lanes in to the Tesla's lane, in front of the Tesla, but travelling at least as fast as the Tesla. AP would normally never allow itself to be that close behind another car without slamming on the brakes, but in this case there's some "understanding" that the car in front will take care of the problem on its own.

There's also the situation where AP gets "nervous" about a car, travelling more slowly in a neighboring lane and a bit in front. It doesn't always brake in that situation, but it does brake if it suspects the car might change lanes; e.g., if it's drifting toward the lane divider, or maybe (?) if it has its turn signal on.

So there are some signs of the beginnings of predictive models.

To me, though, the challenge is greater than that.

A human driver builds a good conceptual model for a familiar environment: e.g. driving on roads around where they live in work, in, say Houston. Take that driver and put them in a snowstorm in Boston, and a lot is different: driving styles are different, road patterns are different, physical characteristics like the slipperiness of the road is different. That driver will be very stressed and is either likely to drive very conservatively or very badly, perhaps both.

AP, right now, is trying to develop a conceptual model based in part on the driver in Houston that is also supposed to work in the Boston blizzard, and vice-versa. That's a _harder_ task than what most humans have to do.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

DocScott said:


> There are cases, though, where AP is clearly using a model of the kind you're referring to, albeit a fairly simple one.
> 
> One notable example is when a car changes lanes in to the Tesla's lane, in front of the Tesla, but travelling at least as fast as the Tesla. AP would normally never allow itself to be that close behind another car without slamming on the brakes, but in this case there's some "understanding" that the car in front will take care of the problem on its own.
> 
> ...


I think you're right. They are adding AI in pieces. As they add in more AI pieces the car becomes more capable and more unpredictable (at least initially.)


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## Misanthropic Mike (May 17, 2019)

The most disconcerting thing by far is the car's lack of object permanence. Surrounding vehicles disappear and reappear constantly, apparently on an almost frame by frame basis. The AI should know that a car is still there, even if it can't see it for a moment. The AI should go further than that, it should continuously try to guess where the other car is.

I fear that the computer is doing way more work than is even needed, since humans only have to make these checks against the conceptual model once every few seconds in most situations... we don't even try to analyze every frame we grab. We have, in fact, a relatively low "framerate" and a VERY limited high fidelity field of view that we have to continuously gimbal to make stereo images of objects of interest one at a time. In fact, fully 50% of our neurons used for image recognition are dedicated to the central 2º of our eyesight. We generally identify an object once, and then catalog this into our model and use the remaining wide angle "perhipheral" vision to track the object, but not continuously re-identify it, as evidenced by the fact that it takes humans a shocking amount of time to recognize when an object in their perhipheral vision has been replaced with something else entirely. Our perhipheral vision does a very simple type of pattern matching from moment to moment to determin where various patterns representing previously identified objects are presently located, and in this way we understand the position and velocity of objects in the surrounding environment. This should take a lot less horsepower than trying to re-identify everything in the entire scene from moment to moment.

In sum, from what I've seen, it looks like they are going about it all wrong. They are trying to build networks with enough power to identify all of the objects over and over again in each frame, which is orders of magnitude more difficult than what humans already do. What humans don't do is look at a truck and then forget that there is a truck less than two seconds later; we know there is a truck, we know where it was, and where it was headed, and we know where it should be in a few seconds, and that's all we need to know for now.


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Misanthropic Mike said:


> The most disconcerting thing by far is the car's lack of object permanence. Surrounding vehicles disappear and reappear constantly, apparently on an almost frame by frame basis. The AI should know that a car is still there, even if it can't see it for a moment. The AI should go further than that, it should continuously try to guess where the other car is.


remember, what is rendered on the screen is not specifically what the computer is limited to seeing. The image on the screen is just to amuse us more than anything.


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## Misanthropic Mike (May 17, 2019)

MelindaV said:


> remember, what is rendered on the screen is not specifically what the computer is limited to seeing. The image on the screen is just to amuse us more than anything.


Perhaps, but the image it shows me hardly inspires confidence. I'm not sure why Tesla would show us anything but their best given the company's constant showmanship in trying to convince investors that FSD is just around the corner.


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## Jim Barnette (Sep 8, 2018)

What I see leads me to think the phantom braking is a conservative overreaction because the video/radar processing pipeline is too slow and too decimated (lower frame rate) in order to accommodate to the hardware. Then in order to work around the slowness there are events that cut thru the pipeline to conservatively slow the car. Often it’s reacting to someone cutting in that is far enough ahead for them to match speed by the time the car would intersect their position, but the car won’t realize that until the processing pipeline is done and it may miss knowledge due to low frame rates. New HW 3.0 can’t come soon enough!


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## John Di Cecco (Sep 25, 2017)

Jim Barnette said:


> What I see leads me to think the phantom braking is a conservative overreaction because the video/sonar processing pipeline is too slow and too decimated (lower frame rate) in order to accommodate to the hardware. Then in order to work around the slowness there are events that cut thru the pipeline to conservatively slow the car. Often it's reacting to someone cutting in that is far enough ahead for them to match speed by the time the car would intersect their position, but the car won't realize that until the processing pipeline is done and it may miss knowledge due to low frame rates. New HW 3.0 can't come soon enough!


You lost me with 'Sonar'


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## Jim Barnette (Sep 8, 2018)

John Di Cecco said:


> You lost me with 'Sonar'


oops, I should've said radar.


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

Jim Barnette said:


> What I see leads me to think the phantom braking is a conservative overreaction because the video/sonar processing pipeline is too slow and too decimated (lower frame rate) in order to accommodate to the hardware. Then in order to work around the slowness there are events that cut thru the pipeline to conservatively slow the car. Often it's reacting to someone cutting in that is far enough ahead for them to match speed by the time the car would intersect their position, but the car won't realize that until the processing pipeline is done and it may miss knowledge due to low frame rates. New HW 3.0 can't come soon enough!


Interesting theory. It is curious how it slows just a little bit sometimes and then resumes. But it maybe it's just not smart enough yet. I don't think it is programmed to anticipate what a car's speed will be or if it will be out of the way before you get there. It does try to figure out if a car is going to merge but once it decides a car is going to merge it doesn't re-evaluate that decision. You have to wait until the car goes away(which can be quite a ways sometimes) or it merges in.

It would be interesting to know if currently, HW3 is running the same code with the same processing time(meaning they are slowing it down so it performs the same as HW2.5.)


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

My sense is that, even with HW 2.5, AP has gotten much more sophisticated recently (I'm on 20.4.4). It's anticipating other cars' behaviors in a much more human-like way than was the case a few versions ago. For example, if I signal to change lanes in to a lane with a slower flow of traffic, it gently slows to match the speed in that lane. It slows more gently than it used to when a slow-moving car crosses in front (i.e. crosses multiple lanes) and resumes speed once it's crossed more quickly. It slows a bit in advance when it sees a curve coming. It also slows a bit (but not too much) when uncertainties increase; e.g., when there's someone ahead driving erratically, or when visibility is limited, or when there's stopped traffic in an adjacent lane.

While the slowing for lane changes in to a slower lane is easy to replicated, the "slowing for uncertainty" behavior is hard to pinpoint, because it's a kind of a judgment call, and it usually involves some kind of corner case. For example, yesterday I was taking an interchange on AP (I don't have EAP or FSD). The two lanes on the right split off for the interchange, and I was in the left one of the two. Just after the lanes split, was one of those spots where you're not supposed to have a car, but it's still paved and you can fit one in if you try. And there was a vehicle (SUV, if I recall) sitting in that spot, with a blinker on (turn signal? hazard? it's a bit of a blur and I didn't hit the dashcam to record it). But the vehicle wasn't moving at that moment.

AP clearly did not like that situation, and I don't blame it. It slowed down about 20 mph, but did so fairly gradually. In fact, my wife, who is certainly familiar with me driving on AP, didn't think it was AP--she thought I was just unsure as to whether to take the interchange. That's different from "phantom braking" of a few versions ago, where it was sharp enough that she'd know quickly it was AP misbehaving! I did use the accelerator to maintain a higher speed than AP was choosing past the stopped car, because I judged it wasn't about to jump out in to traffic, but I think the car reacted reasonably and that if I'd let it AP would have calmly driven by the person who wasn't where they were supposed to be at maybe 35 mph, and then picked back up to highway speed. 

So I think there's still software gains being made that affect HW 2.5.


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