Not only is Tesla nowhere near self-driving, it is buggy as heck.
Bluetooth: Many times cannot connect to the phone for audio. BT has been around for how many years? And how many cheap product can use it without fail? Yet I have to reboot the Tesla and even then there is only a chance I’ll be able to connect via bluetooth.
Cruise Control: I can’t even drive with it on. There is one specific spot on a back country road that without any speed limit sign, the Tesla is on CC at 35mph (the actual limit) and it will speed up on its own to 65mph. Every. Time. And occasionally if there a car in front of me like a quarter-mile away the Tesla will do its, “Holy Fuck! We’re all gonna DIE!!!” braking. I almost ended up with a big rig in my back seat when it did this for no reason on a freeway at speed.
Sensors: The newer update now tells you the distance in the front and back for parking. Except it will read out “STOP!” when you are two feet from anything. Even more disconcerting is when parked in the garage … well first let me explain that shifting in a Tesla reverse and drive are different directions. Unlike regular shifters there is absolutely no passing through R to get to D so if I am in reverse in the Tesla I am only going to be reversing. OK back to the story. I have the Tesla in reverse in my garage. Since there is a wall in front of me it reads out “STOP!” although behind me is perfectly clear.
As a perspective, my new Highlander Limited does many of these things but actually does it right so it’s not a question of Tesla being bleeding edge.
I find this is pretty phone dependent. My current Google Pixel 6a almost always connects perfectly with no problems. Previously I’ve had a Samsung S8, and Google Pixel 3 and 4a. I think the Pixel 3 was the worst, requiring that I tell the car to connect about half the time. Then there would be an update and the phone would get better, then another update and it would get worse. Sometimes the 6a will refuse to send audio over bluetooth, but I think that was fixed a few updates ago, because it hasn’t happened in a few months.
Anyway, the point is the car is mostly fine with bluetooth, it seems to be the phone (at least for me).
The rest of the things, I pretty much agree with you. I don’t have any locations where the speed limit goes up, but the cities around here like to have signs that say
Speed
Limit
25
Unless otherwise
posted
Which frequently cause the car to slow from 40 to 25, even though the actual speed limit is still 40.
I still think Tesla should be devoting a great deal of effort to fixing the phantom braking problem. It is far better than it was 4 ago, but still an issue. Is there a class action suit about it? I think I remember that, maybe it will go someplace.
I have very limited experience with other make’s adaptive cruise control, so I’m not sure what appropriate expectations are. I was recently in a Honda with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping. It did very well driving itself, but we were on a freeway with heavy traffic, and the Tesla also does very well in that situation. I also drove an older Lexus with adaptive cruise control, and it was fine, but not nearly as sophisticated as the Tesla, so it’s probably not fair to compare them.
New Teslas got rid of the parking sensors and are doing it all with vision, so that will fix that problem, right?
I’ve had problems like this. Is the car reading the signs, or is it bad navigation data?
Edit: I should add, there’s signs that say 25 (when snowing) or 55 (5 tons or more), etc. The Tesla seems to just follow the topline number and ignore the conditional.
It’s reading the sign, or the number part, anyway.
There’s on particular place where a freeway turns into a local road and the speed limit drops from 60 → 55 → 45 → 35 in about half a mile. The car knows about the drop to 55, but not the others, and it doesn’t read the signs in this one location for some reason.
There are places on I-70 with signs similar to that. Sometimes the Tesla sees them, and sometimes it doesn’t.
I really want a “small town speed trap” mode. Where it uses navigation data, and maybe vision, to be going the posted speed limit at the speed limit sign. That would be really nice in rural Texas where the highway will go from 75 to 55 (and then lower), and there’s always cop in the Dairy Queen parking lot.
To be fair, I’m a human and I’ve never understood the “Speed Limit 25 Unless Otherwise Posted” signs, so I can understand the software being confused. How far are you supposed to travel without seeing a speed limit sign before you decide it hasn’t been posted and drop down to 25? That’s something they never taught us in driver’s ed.
I’ve seen speed limit signs on state highways in Missouri that say 65, and right below it is a “25 except where posted” sign. WTF?
Yup, I agree. The default is 25 unless you see it posted higher somewhere.
How is it on larger downhills where will be one sign Speed Limit 45 & then a little bit ahead there will be another one Truck Speed Limit 25? Cars can do 45, only trucks have to abide by the lower limit.
OK, so it doesn’t necessarily apply to that particular stretch of road that it’s posted on, but anywhere in the town, village or burg. That makes more sense. Sorry for the hijack!
No, thanks for the hijack because I have no clue what that sign meant either. And I’m still unsure. I mean, why not just Speed Limit 25? Obviously it changes when posted elsewhere.
Here is a link to Google Street view of one of the signs in the wild. For context, the street containing the sign has a 40MPH speed limit. The sign says “unless posted otherwise” which I suppose is much clearer than when I transposed some of the words?
I’ve always thought the sign means that if there isn’t a posted speed limit, such as on many residential streets, the speed limit is 25. As @Shoeless says, that is pretty ambiguous as to what exactly does “posted otherwise” mean.
When I see it, I’m busy driving so I have to use my judgement and context to know what to do. The car is much better at multitasking and has an always on internet connection. The driving AI should be able to lookup the city and state statutes and, if necessary, pass them to a lawyer bot to parse to figure out what exactly the sign means. It doesn’t have to do this each time. It can just cache the result for each jurisdiction.
Not uncommon. My Audi ICE car does the same; I’m in reverse and the car is beeping like crazy because there’s my garage wall in front of me. And yeah, it’s a pretty stoopid thing.
I believe that’s because trucks, being so much heavier, generally need to preserve their braking power more than cars on long downhill sections, so it makes sense to restrict them to lower speeds.
Our Hyundai Ioniq does the same thing, but there’s a little button next to the gear shift labeled “P” with a symbol of rays emanating outward that turns the parking assist (and thus beeping) on and off.
Oh here is another one and not in cruise control. Also it appears to be random.
You are going along a city street maybe 25 mph. There is a car stopped in front of you 40 to 50 feet away. As you start to lift your foot off the accelerator (and in a Tesla that’s also braking) it will you give you the “You’re about to crash!” alarm. I have never even remotely come close to crashing into the other car.
I know that is the reason for the two different speed limits. My question is is Tesla reading the word ‘truck’ in the lower speed limit signs & ignoring them or seeing them & slowing down to 25 & then speeding up to 45 at the next ‘regular’ / car speed limit sign & then slowing down again at the next truck one? If the OP is stating their software isn’t up to speed, that’s a scenario I could see it failing on.
That’s the behavior I see. Not always, but often enough to be noticeable.
I’ve described it as such before: the Tesla is like a spookable horse. It’s mostly fine, but sometimes something gets into it that makes it freak out. And then it’s fine again.
To clarify, it’s ignoring the word truck & you’re cruising downhill at 45 or you revert between 45 & 25 because it only sees ‘speed limit’ & doesn’t notice/understand the word ‘truck’?
If the Tesla sees a speed limit sign, it’ll change its speed to match the sign. It’s not capable of understanding any limitations or conditions on the sign. For example, I think it was on I10 east towards Indio, there’ll be a sign that says “70 mph”. So up to 70 mph it goes. Then a quarter mile later, there’ll be a sign that says “55 mph Trucks”, and down to 55 mph it goes. Repeat every pair of speed-limit signs after each interchange.
Note that my Tesla doesn’t have full self driving, just the mode where it maintains speed and steers to stay in lane (so turns and lane changes are manual).