Hi Haggy- have had my GT over a year. Coming up on 25k miles. Litany of issues with car - but still love it. This is for another thread... For Dream Drive pro- Highway assist went live about 6 months ago. Traffic assist not live yet - I don't think at least. When car stops I have to press accelerator to release it from HOLD.
Current status of Highway assist is like Tesla Autopilot V1. It works ok - and glad to have it. I hope it improves- but get sense they may have stopped working on it. Going around curves on highways faster than 60 MPH it loses the lane keeping. Graphics on screen don't show other vehicles to the side, just vehicle in front. If car moves to one side of land or other- it does not show this graphically. Your car is always miraculously centered in the lane - even when it's not. So bit of fake news.
I owned 2 different Tesla Model S' for 6 years - was early adopter. I got the sense that auto pilot was constantly learning and improving on the fly. Anticipating curves, slowing down where appropriate. I don't see this learning yet on Lucid.
One thing I like about Highway assist is that when you shift lanes, it let's you do it easily- and re-engages automatically in new lane. Subjective - Tesla wheel feels tight when on autopilot. Lucid feels less so - more apt to float out of lane around corner. I personally prefer the Tesla autopilot tightness.
Have said this before - Love my Lucid air more than Tesla- which I loved too. Drive quality, luxury, range, looks, audio- hands down winner. Tech is only aspect lacking. Best I can say it's 'fine' - but for a super car the bar should be much higher. I don't get the sense they're investing much into it either- especially given all the criticism. It seems like this part should be the easiest to fix given the hardware- and much more of a priority. Oh well.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for that. For the comparison to AP1, you mean over its lifetime? Initially, the ACC was on par with something from 2006. It worked well, as long as you didn't expect it to bring you to a stop. Over time, it improved tremendously, and is as good as anything of the type that I've used, even on high end 2022 cars that I've tried.
Autosteer has also improved incredibly since then, and it's definitely improved in the time since AP2 came out. The latest version has done things based on cars in adjacent lanes even getting close to my lane suddenly.
I still have one of the first Teslas made with Autopilot, and I have one of the first few hundred Model 3s, so I got to see the technology criss cross, with AP2 starting off behind, but FSD still not being good enough on local streets.
What I've learned from all this is that I probably don't need FSD on local streets and it's more a matter of having the tech for the fun of it. AP1 features make driving easier, especially on long trips, and the only thing that I miss from AP2+ when using AP1 is having it change lanes for me on highways when I'm in an unfamiliar place with complex freeways and I might have missed a lane change or exit without it. Ironically, it can handle crowded Los Angeles freeways better than it can handle my quiet neighborhood.
But for the most part, I have a better idea of when to change lanes than the car does. I have to look before lane changes anyway, so most of the time, it's saving me a flick of the turn signal lever at most, which is not a big deal.
I've also driven a Tesla with what's now the base autopilot and I didn't like it. Having to turn it back on after changing lanes manually was annoying but not reading speed limit signs meant that if the speed limit was 80mph, and it thought that it was 55, I had to either turn off autosteer or manage my own speed, neither of which is safer than letting me ignore what it thinks that the speed limit is.
For now, having something with good working lane centering that lets me drive at an appropriate speed with good ACC is what I want, as long as it doesn't have impossible to deal with nags. With Tesla, designing a system where you need torque on the steering wheel to use autosteer, or torque on the steering wheel to not use it (i.e. disengage it) makes it very awkward, forcing me to take my eyes off the road to look for nag messages, it ending up with autosteer off because the car wanted to move the steering wheel a tad more or less than my grip allowed.
I'm fine with a car that makes sure that I'm watching the road and I understand that some people are fine with Tesla as long as they hold the wheel slightly, but we are all built differently and Tesla's system of checking for attention doesn't work for people like me. Plus, there's no relationship to holding the wheel and paying attention in the first place.
I'm fine with steps back from where the latest FSD is on freeways, but the fact that I thought that Dream Drive was almost there a year ago but I still haven't heard big news gives me echoes of Tesla.
