10k miles in 6 months on AutoPilot

Humans have been driving automobiles for well over a century. I myself have over 2 decades of experience under my belt. In all this time, we have taught ourselves to drive hours at a stretch, tweaking the experience over months, years and decades. An hour long daily commute can happen largely on auto-pilot, without needing much exertion.

Enter the Tesla Autopilot. Introduced 5 years ago, almost 200,000 cars have collectively driven 1.2 billion miles on Autopilot. 6 months ago I got my Model S 100D. And every week since, I have been getting more comfortable with the Autopilot features.

A self-driving car may be the ultimate gift for a gadget geek. But would you trust your life with it? What if it doesn’t stop in time? Just needs to fail once. There’s so much variability — day/night, weather, seasons, road conditions, sunlight and shadows, aggressive driving styles, motorbikes, big rigs etc. How much testing could Tesla possibly have done? Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe.

There have been a few surprises, mostly good. Many features are for demo purposes only, like Auto Summon and Auto Park. But, the core AutoPilot technology has crept in and become a part of my everyday life.

Autopilot requires developing a whole another set of habits and patterns. Should I AutoSteer straight away or just Traffic-Aware Cruise Control first and then step up? How will I keep track of what mode I’m in? There’s nothing natural about exerting light force on the steering wheel every 45 seconds at least. What’s special about 45 seconds? Why not 1 minute, or 30 seconds. Maybe they really wanted 30 seconds and decided to give some leeway. What testing has been done on this? Will I forget to drive?

And there’s the moody Tesla computer. There are maddening days when the audio stops working and makes for a rather frustrating commute. You wish for a simple knob-controlled radio. An update is needed to resolve things. There must be a reboot option I wager. What if the computer crashes in the middle of Autopilot? Not to worry, planes have had Autopilot for decades. But planes don’t go in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

On a freeway, Autopilot is reliable enough that I rarely look for the steering wheel symbol. But sometimes Autopilot fails to engage as expected and I take a peek. But once it gets going, it usually holds fine. Once in a while it abruptly beep loudly and just quits, requiring a quick take over. I’ve always had this nagging suspicion that my Tesla hugs to the right of the lane a bit. It makes going on the leftmost lane dicey for the sake of the bikers. Second lane from left works well. But over time, I’ve gotten used to it. The lane-centering ignoring the vehicles does seem a bit odd though. Once a big rig swerved into my lane causing the panic beeps and I had to take over.

All vehicles looking like Teslas was a big pet peeve until that got addressed in an update. The new vehicle shapes are pretty. Just the constant hovering movement of a vehicle, even at a complete stop, is a bit unnerving. It’s like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle at the macro level. The vehicle may be there or it may not. Watching nearby vehicles in the front display is quite disorienting. They are always either too close or over the lane markings in the display. It’s like the AI is assuming the worst.

The distance setting with the vehicle in front is one I kept tweaking. Initially, 1 seemed safe enough. Too much gap with car in front in gridlock traffic. But high speed stops get jerky. Over time, I moved to 3 and now have been on 4 for a couple of months. After a lot of apprehension of being rear-ended, I realized every driver just focuses on the immediate car in front.

Twice, the door handles retracted just when I held them and they had a little wrestling match with my fingers and won. Passengers entering the car have to learn to just tap the handle and wait for them to extrude out first.

Highway 101 seems to be chock full of Teslas. Superchargers have a queue during peak hours. Electric cars are all the craze. AutoPilot-like features are flooding the market. Elon Musk promises full enhanced AutoPilot by end of 2020. I’ll take 2025. Whatever happens, we’re in for an interesting ride.