Hacker News Reader

Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

> This means that you don’t have to touch the accelerator during stop and go traffic because it will do it for you. Soon Model S owners will be able to change lanes by only tapping on the turn signal stalks. No, they do not have to buy a new Model S to get this feature, they can simply connect their car to a wi-fi connection and get firmware updates.

As someone who grew up in NYC and never learned to drive that is not only really cool but immensely appealing.

View on HN

I got adaptive cruise control in an Audi A3 last year and was amazed to find out it was first introduced in the mid 90s!

That being said it feels very futuristic having a radar in your car and makes driving on the motorway a lot more pleasant. However I now seem to spend the brain cycles I was using on judging speed imagining up bugs that could cause me to accelerate into the car in front :/

This. I'd played with all sorts of leap second adjustments, time zone switching, etc.

A really rolling road (Arizona has some of these) where the car might be one "roller" ahead of you but look a lot closer, then your car hits the brakes at the apex with a car tailing you.

There is a warning in the manual about sharp corners. There are times when on coming cars could look like they are in your lane.

The biggest issue is that it ignores stationary cars, so if you come around a corner to red traffic lights it would drive straight into any stationary cars. Which is why I only really use it on the motorways (highways).

Does it work if you're following a motorbike? I'm not sure how wide a vehicle it needs to get a decent radar return.

Edit: Just looking at a Honda manual online[1], it says: "ACC may not recognize motorcycles or other small vehicles ahead of your vehicle". That's more than a little worrying.

[1] https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/om/JA0606/JA0606O00...

Mine tracks bikes well, I think it also uses a camera mounted above the rear view mirror.

It also uses that camera to dip the headlights, which is often tricked by two lights close together (reflectors on bollards or traffic cones). It's also has to wait to see the headlights, where as I can tell they are coming a short time before.

And it doesn't dim the lights for bicycles/motorcycles. Audis are the bane of my existence. If you can turn that feature off and manually control the brights I implore you to do so.

* they can simply connect their car to a wi-fi connection and get firmware updates.*

Scary thought. What could possibly go wrong?

Automotive software should not have frequent updates.

> Automotive software should not have frequent updates.

Quite the contrary, I don't want to know how many integrated nav solutions or mediatainment systems are vulnerable to all sorts of exploits with no way to be updated except by an expensive visit to a service center.

Today, if it's vulnerable to an exploit, it's probably been exploited long before the vendor finds out about it. Patch-based security stopped working once the opposition became governments and organized crime, not script kiddies and email spammers.

> This means that you don’t have to touch the accelerator during stop and go traffic because it will do it for you

To be fair this kind of technology has been on top end Mercedes for a while (10yrs plus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU83G3OaJuU#t=115

I drove one a few summers ago as a chauffeur for Farmers Classic, it was all in/around LA so was incredible on jammed freeways, It's nothing new though or Tesla specific.

> Soon Model S owners will be able to change lanes by only tapping on the turn signal stalks

Not sure exactly how this will work: will the car change lane immediately (or just a few seconds after you turn on the signal) or will it first make sure that the driver behind you won't close the gap? Because if it doesn't do the second thing (i.e. making sure that the driver behind you will let you change the lane) then I'm not sure how it will work in cities with crazy traffic.

Quite a lot of cars have lane assist now, where they will have a light on the wing mirror if there is something in your blind spot.

They also vibrate the wheel if you go over lanes and aid in steering your back.

I imagine this is a combination of the two. My worry is how it deals with something like this http://www.op-online.de/bilder/2012/12/18/2669673/1360212316... Does it just stop?

Really cool feature - the adaptive cruise control feature is now becoming an option on more mainstream cars, and it is one of those "how did I ever drive in traffic without this feature" things. I think many people don't get how incredible that feature alone is - it isn't fully autonomous, but it makes driving in serious traffic so much less stressful. Add in Tesla's auto lane change and lane keep and you're 80% of the way to self driving.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com