And I think they are far ahead of the game compared to anyone else w.r.t autonomous driving, they have a fleet sending them data back real time.
IOW, despite Elon claiming for years that they're ahead because of the "millions of miles" of free data collection by Tesla drivers, it turns out once the engineers on the ground actually speak...they're actually pretty far behind on the data front, and most of the data they are getting is the same safe routes over and over again since they're not trying to put Autopilot into novel situations to acquire new data or test the ML algorithm's capabilities to handle unique/novel situations (like trucks turning in the highway, or freeway dividers).
My takeaway from the presentation is that Tesla will perform better than other companies in this space (although I don't know enough about Waymo to comment) due to the following:
-You want a large dataset (Tesla and many companies have this and can simulate) -You want a varied/diverse dataset (Tesla and many companies have this and can simulate)--the point here is simulations for simple cases work (you can only simulate when you know), but for complex ones are close to the difficulty of actual FSD -You want a real dataset (Tesla is the only company who can say this and can say they have data on how X00Ks of drivers will handle these situations)
And Autpilot's performance (including its numerous regressions) suggests very strongly either that it doesn't have a very large data set, or else that it has a large data set of everyone doing roughly the same thing almost all of the time. These are the two most logical explanations for Autopilot's tendency to veer toward freeway dividers even (especially?) after updates.
I don't thinks it is a fair characterization: first the notion of "large" is fairly subjective. But more importantly the fact that they collect data on pre-determined triggers is just a guarantee that the dataset is not over-fitted (let say to the 280 and 101 in the Bay Area and to Elon's commute in LA) and instead has good coverage of the world.
Their capabilities of triggering on situation allows them to grow the dataset quickly in a supervised way. It is all about the granularity of these triggers, imagine that you can express "collect situation in tunnels with jerk higher than X m/s3" or "collect all lane change abort in snow condition", ... In the next 24h you get data from all over the world and this data is automatically tagged and classified by the neural net.
They also have cars all over the planet while Waymo seems to only be tested in a few cities. I can't find the podcast, but Elon mentioned how one of the main difficulties is the varying types of intersections. There are only so many intersections in Mountain View. But Tesla is getting data for all kinds of intersections.
Lane following works effectively, but it wanders a bit. Mostly not enough to be bothersome, though sometimes it will hug one side or the other close enough to make me think about the big truck next to me. Sometimes a little late reacting to a curve, though not to the point of going across the line. Planned lane changes work pretty nicely. Identification of vehicles around the car is good towards the front and noticeably spotty to the rear quadrants. It reliably misidentifies the merging traffic lane as one big lane as soon as the line ends, and promptly drives to the right to straddle the 'middle' and then corrects as the line converges to the normal width.
Adaptive cruise control is flat out disappointing. Granted, I've never driven anyone else's automation, but it actually made me motion sick at times. I thought it did a really admirable job of handling people merging right in front of the nose of my car without jamming the brakes. Just smoothly slipped back until the right following distance was achieved. But in open traffic, when I came up on another car, it would abruptly slow down a bit too aggressively, and then fiddle with the speed a bit until it matched the leading car. If the lead car switched lanes, it waited until several seconds after the car was in the next lane and then abruptly sped up to the programmed max speed. There were times I could tell how frustrating this style was to people behind us who were not using a similar system.
Twice it braked suddenly, though not any kind of panic stop, and then immediately sped back up. Like it saw something concerning and then changed it's mind a split second later. Made my wife a little nervous after the second time, but it didn't happen again the rest of our trip.
Overall I'd classify it as a moderately drunk driver :). I let it drive us into a couple moderately uncomfortable merge situations just to see how it would deal with traffic entering the freeway, and while it didn't get us in a wreck or anything, it didn't make me feel like AP is on the verge of becoming viable FSD.
For what it's worth, this was on I-5 in between Portland and Seattle, in mostly light traffic. We have what are, in my experience, pretty easy relaxed freeway configurations. Long ramps, no ramp lights, etc.
I borrowed the P3D so I could have myself an extended test drive to decide if I really wanted a Model 3 or not. Wicked fast (which is still an understatement), I love the power but would probably choose to steer it myself for the forseable future. I wish they'd put in nicer seats (like, my legs were getting numb at one point!), just standard Recaros like everyone else would be perfectly nice. I think I've decided that I really like it but I'm going to wait for Model Y before pulling the trigger. I will appreciate the additional head space and seat height, and hoping that in the meantime they do v3 or v4 of the seats.
Some of your experiences are similar to mine. I think you have seen the improved merge handling, in prior versions zipper merging in heavy traffic had me disengaging due to getting too close to the merging car coming into my lane.
I have also experienced the unexpected brake pulse during adaptive cruise on a couple occasions and would really like to have seen some indication on the guidance display of what caused it. The delay when a car moves out of lane (or turns right onto a side street ahead of you) is definitely too long. The stop and go following however I think is extremely smooth, and I commute heavy highway traffic 3-4 days a week and love it. I think the amount of wheel-touch requests from AP has decreased significantly on the highway when speed is low / in traffic, I had maybe 2 or 3 touche requests in 20 minutes of heavy traffic this afternoon, although I may have adjusted volume and skipped tracks in between a couple times (which counts).
I wonder if the seats have changed? I find the drivers seat extremely comfortable. I know the back seats were revised since TM3 started shipping. I love the lack of a model year, they are always refining and enhancing the base hardware.
If I have a list of a half-dozen refinements I want which weren't included in the car at launch, how can I tell if a given used car for sale has them? Is there any type of master list of features/changes/dates?