Drove ~400mi from Orange County to the Bay Area yesterday on 2.8.0, most of it with Hands Free Drive Assist active in my 2023 Air Touring. Updated over the weekend so I can compare to the experience without HFDA on the way down.
- I was forced to override the system three times to avoid running off the road or into tractor trailers. Each time the road lines were either momentarily missing or washed out in the evening sun, and the car drifted out of the lane. Happened once in large truck traffic in the Grapevine and twice over the repaired bridges on the 5 near Patterson, where the repaired asphalt didn’t have new lines painted on the road. Drifted right off the road and I had to quickly readjust.
- Experienced phantom breaking only once compared to five times during the drive down last week on the previous software. Definitely improved.
- Direct Sunlight caused major problems for both lane detection and facial reading. Around 7pm driving into the sun through Pleasanton, the car suddenly demanded I take over driving and repeatedly had trouble finding my face while wearing polarized sunglasses.
- Facial detection would work fine for 2-3hours then suddenly go through areas it couldn’t find me and I’d have to remove my sunglasses … which wasn’t ideal driving into the blinding afternoon light.
- I could never get lane change assist to work, despite activating it in settings and dashed lines showing in the display. As soon as I’d engage the turn signal the display would switch to solid lines and not change lanes.
As a non-HFDA note, charging rate at the Kettleman Electrify America stop on 2.8.0 was very poor. Started out at 180Kw but it dropped much lower than usual, charging at ~20Kw from 60-75%. It was very hot (110F at the charger, 117F measured in direct sunlight back on the freeway) and the fans were making a lot of noise, so I’m assuming the super low rate was heat related.
- I was forced to override the system three times to avoid running off the road or into tractor trailers. Each time the road lines were either momentarily missing or washed out in the evening sun, and the car drifted out of the lane. Happened once in large truck traffic in the Grapevine and twice over the repaired bridges on the 5 near Patterson, where the repaired asphalt didn’t have new lines painted on the road. Drifted right off the road and I had to quickly readjust.
- Experienced phantom breaking only once compared to five times during the drive down last week on the previous software. Definitely improved.
- Direct Sunlight caused major problems for both lane detection and facial reading. Around 7pm driving into the sun through Pleasanton, the car suddenly demanded I take over driving and repeatedly had trouble finding my face while wearing polarized sunglasses.
- Facial detection would work fine for 2-3hours then suddenly go through areas it couldn’t find me and I’d have to remove my sunglasses … which wasn’t ideal driving into the blinding afternoon light.
- I could never get lane change assist to work, despite activating it in settings and dashed lines showing in the display. As soon as I’d engage the turn signal the display would switch to solid lines and not change lanes.
As a non-HFDA note, charging rate at the Kettleman Electrify America stop on 2.8.0 was very poor. Started out at 180Kw but it dropped much lower than usual, charging at ~20Kw from 60-75%. It was very hot (110F at the charger, 117F measured in direct sunlight back on the freeway) and the fans were making a lot of noise, so I’m assuming the super low rate was heat related.
