This sounds great. Surprised to not have seen it laid out like this a bit earlier given the imminence of the Model 3.
As Tesla prepares for our first mass-market vehicle and continues to increase our Model S and Model X fleet, we’re making charging an even greater priority. It is extremely important to us and our mission that charging is convenient, abundant, and reliable for all owners, current and future. In 2017, we’ll be doubling the Tesla charging network, expanding existing sites so drivers never wait to charge, and broadening our charging locations within city centers.
I’ve been running with 17.14.23 in my Model X for about a week now. Prior to this week, I was driving a loaner with HW1. It was interesting to see what the state of the art was before HW2 came along and how the two compare.
Clearly, the shift from MobileEye was very destabilizing to the progress of Autopilot. From what I know, they are basically trying to rewrite everything that used to exist from scratch. And it seems like they still have a way to go.
Granted, things have gotten a lot better. I would have described the driving of Autosteer prior to the 8.1 release as “drunken sailor” at times. And any time I went through an intersection and it lost the lock on the lines on the road, it would start veering to the left and I’d have to take it out of Autosteer. Now, I’d describe the driving as “teenager learning how to drive.” There are still issues with going through intersections, though now it seems to want to veer right instead. Go figure.
Also, the display is still plagued with uncertainty of the environment. I have posted two videos for your entertainment that show moving lines as well as cars that appear and disappear. All while stopped at a light.
So there is still a ways to go. I am concerned about the jittery display features because let’s face it, at a stop, nothing is actually moving, so why is the display moving around like that unless their tracking software is still very sub-par/untrained. I am hoping this gets resolved soon because that is the basis that all the other layers of the software are based on—it’s hard to stay between the lines if they are constantly moving around.
All that said, I will say that highway driving is definitely better than it was previously. But I’ve noticed a couple of issues:
When the road curves left, it gets really close to the line, and that tends to freak out drivers next to me, as well as myself.
I used auto lane change last night and the car moved over and then started to heavily veer more in that direction. That was bad. Fortunately I had my hand on the wheel, and there was no one near me. I have, however, used lane change previously and it worked perfectly, so not sure what was up there.
I think the problem with going through intersections will be solved when they finally re-enable the ability to follow the car in front of you. The display always shows what it is tracking in blue. So when it’s tracking the lines on the road, they turn blue. If the lines disappear, on HW1 cars/software, it will switch to following the car in front of you and it will turn blue instead. When the lines can be tracked again, it switches back. That part is still missing for HW2 software (called TeslaVision, if I’m not mistaken).
I’ve reported my issues to Tesla, and hopefully this will help them improve the software.
Despite the issues I’ve talked about, using Autosteer is a lot of fun to use! I am still amazed that I am living in a time when cars can drive themselves, and my son might not ever really need a license. Very exciting times!
Update: I have read that Tesla is prioritizing highway driving over ‘surface’ streets, which makes total sense. So that might explain why I’m still seeing what I’m seeing, and yet highway driving seems to show more stable lines.
Now, I had been of the mind that maybe Fuel Cells were the way to go for this type of application. They are far quicker to refuel, and after all, trucks need to be places in a timely fashion. So when I read this I was like “how are they going to make this feasible?”
But I just recently had another thought. What if instead of recharging, they merely stopped at battery-swap locations. They pull up, the machine removes the current battery pack, replaces it with a fully charged one, and they’re off again.
I know this was attempted by Tesla in the past, but seems to have been abandoned. But now I’m starting to wonder if maybe this is the secret sauce to this type of application. But such an operation would require a massive undertaking to build such locations.
I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been waiting to post the chronicle of my current car repair. I’m hopeful it will be resolved by next week, and I’ll then post the daily journal I’ve been writing about the day-to-day fun waiting for them to diagnose and fix my FWD sensor issue.
