Highway Assist Much Improved After Latest Updates...

[Buffalo Bob]

Just took a quick road trip from Phoenix, AZ to La Jolla, CA, and Highway Assist performed quite well. It's very stable in the left or middle lanes, but also handled on and off ramp markings (or lack thereof) in the right lane pretty well. Lane change assist worked nicely too. As a next step, I think it would be great if Lucid could make the 'hands on the wheel' software a little less demanding. Despite me having both hands in place and trying to apply some torque, I find myself having to 'semi-steer' the car just to stop the constant reminders to 'nudge' the wheel. Still, a huge improvement.

 

[TakeDuo]

I agree! I think my biggest surprise from the update is how well it handles those off/on ramps. It used to be spastic for me swerving erratically. Now it’s very smooth and tracks the lane I want to stay in.

 

[rfc805]

That's interesting - one of the most "common" issues I had with it, is every time I passed an off-ramp, it tracked fine - but it would temporarily lift off the throttle at the end of every single off-ramp while continuing straight. Like it suddenly lost confidence right at the end.

 

[Smitzer]

I completed a 3600 mile road trip in early October from Northern Utah to Southeast Wisconsin to Columbus Ohio, then back to Utah. I used highway assist most of the time, and quite a bit of lane change assist. It performed very well. Made the trip much more pleasant.

I turned it off in road construction zones, and on some county highways.

The strangest thing I observed was the system briefly slowing hard when the shadow of a truck from an overpass crossing the freeway hit the road just right. The truck was above me, and the sun was was between me and the truck, casting a long shadow in the road as I approached. It seemed to recognize there was no safety issue and sped back up again.

 

[borski]

Just took a quick road trip from Phoenix, AZ to La Jolla, CA, and Highway Assist performed quite well. It's very stable in the left or middle lanes, but also handled on and off ramp markings (or lack thereof) in the right lane pretty well. Lane change assist worked nicely too. As a next step, I think it would be great if Lucid could make the 'hands on the wheel' software a little less demanding. Despite me having both hands in place and trying to apply some torque, I find myself having to 'semi-steer' the car just to stop the constant reminders to 'nudge' the wheel. Still, a huge improvement.

There was a tidbit in one of the Lucid Tech & Manufacturing day slides that made it seem like they were working on hands-free ADAS, so hopefully that 'hands on the wheel' warning should get better.

Slide 115: https://ir.lucidmotors.com/static-files/46807963-ff30-4395-9ceb-234c40a94fc5

 

[vav493]

Agreed! The recent update added a large chunk of confidence (for me) behind Lucid’s ADAS. It may also just be in part to me using DDPro more haha

I don’t really care to compare it to the FSD on my Model 3, but what helped me with this recent update was the visualization. I feel better seeing what the computer is (mostly) thinking about, whereas before, all I could tell was whether it knew it was in a lane and if there was a car ahead of me. With FSD and AutoPilot, it’s been nice to look at the screen and see what car is noticing, the color of the traffic lights, traffic signs it’s picked up on, what it thinks the lanes look like, etc. I don’t care about any of the more advanced self-driving features at the moment since I’ve only mostly comfortable with just letting go of control of the acceleration/braking functions

It’s also nice to see they are actually going to continue developing it and making use of all the hardware installed for DreamDrive Pro. It makes me incredibly excited. I hope maybe we get even more expanded visualization

 

[Buffalo Bob]

There was a tidbit in one of the Lucid Tech & Manufacturing day slides that made it seem like they were working on hands-free ADAS, so hopefully that 'hands on the wheel' warning should get better.

Slide 115: https://ir.lucidmotors.com/static-files/46807963-ff30-4395-9ceb-234c40a94fc5
View attachment 24239

Thanks for re-posting this Software Feature Enhancements chart, @borski. I think it's quite noteworthy to see how many of the boxes have been ticked off either in full or in part.

To be clear... While I certainly look forward to the day when Hands-Free Highway Assist is available, I will be more than happy just to have the current requirement dialed back a little. I fully intend to keep my hands on the wheel even when Hands-Free comes along, but there's a big difference to me between just resting one or both of my hands on the wheel, and having to continually 'nudge' the wheel. I guess in a perfect world, the software would recognize that the driver is making a consistent effort to fulfill the requirement, but is still tripping the sensors, and then adjust the sensors to be a little less demanding. That would keep the bar high for those drivers who are trying to push the envelope, but lower the bar for those drivers who are clearly trying to comply. But, as I said, it's not all that big a deal, as is.

 

[borski]

Thanks for re-posting this Software Feature Enhancements chart, @borski. I think it's quite noteworthy to see how many of the boxes have been ticked off either in full or in part.

To be clear... While I certainly look forward to the day when Hands-Free Highway Assist is available, I will be more than happy just to have the current requirement dialed back a little. I fully intend to keep my hands on the wheel even when Hands-Free comes along, but there's a big difference to me between just resting one or both of my hands on the wheel, and having to continually 'nudge' the wheel. I guess in a perfect world, the software would recognize that the driver is making a consistent effort to fulfill the requirement, but is still tripping the sensors, and then adjust the sensors to be a little less demanding. That would keep the bar high for those drivers who are trying to push the envelope, but lower the bar for those drivers who are clearly trying to comply. But, as I said, it's not all that big a deal, as is.

Unfortunately, because the wheel is torque-sensitive, the “nudge” is required. It has. I idea you have your hands on the wheel because it isn’t capacitive; it cannot sense you there. Triggering the torque sensor will always require some force.

My guess as to how they’ll do the hands free ADAS is by using the interior camera that stares at your face; otherwise they’d have to replace the steering wheels, which they’re not going to do.

They could maybe increase the time, but I’m not sure if those are defined by law or not.

I suspect the eye-based one will be fine (if that’s what they decide to do) with torque as a fallback for if that fails for some reason. I’m guessing that would result in a lot fewer false positives.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

Unfortunately, because the wheel is torque-sensitive, the “nudge” is required. It has. I idea you have your hands on the wheel because it isn’t capacitive; it cannot sense you there. Triggering the torque sensor will always require some force.

My guess as to how they’ll do the hands free ADAS is by using the interior camera that stares at your face; otherwise they’d have to replace the steering wheels, which they’re not going to do.

They could maybe increase the time, but I’m not sure if those are defined by law or not.

I suspect the eye-based one will be fine (if that’s what they decide to do) with torque as a fallback for if that fails for some reason. I’m guessing that would result in a lot fewer false positives.

Well, now I am confused... When they do implement hands-free ADAS, why would any monitoring of the steering wheel be needed while HA is operating? I know that the eyes-on monitoring absolutely must continue, but what would be the point of continuing to monitor the steering wheel?

 

[TakeDuo]

Well, now I am confused... When they do implement hands-free ADAS, why would any monitoring of the steering wheel be needed while HA is operating? I know that the eyes-on monitoring absolutely must continue, but what would be the point of continuing to monitor the steering wheel?

There will always be a need for redundancy with Highway Assist. I agree that there shouldn’t be a torque requirement with Dream Drive or whatever they call hands off/next level ADAS.

 

[borski]

Well, now I am confused... When they do implement hands-free ADAS, why would any monitoring of the steering wheel be needed while HA is operating? I know that the eyes-on monitoring absolutely must continue, but what would be the point of continuing to monitor the steering wheel?

Camera can’t see your eyes, you wear glasses it cant see through, you look at the nav for a few seconds, etc.

If it can’t verify you’re looking forward, it will always allow you to use the torque on the steering wheel to let it know you’re still paying attention.

Just redundancy.

P.S. I reiterate I made this completely up, I do not know if this is how the system will work, but if I were designing such a system this is how I would make it work.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

Camera can’t see your eyes, you wear glasses it cant see through, you look at the nav for a few seconds, etc.

If it can’t verify you’re looking forward, it will always allow you to use the torque on the steering wheel to let it know you’re still paying attention.

Just redundancy.

P.S. I reiterate I made this completely up, I do not know if this is how the system will work, but if I were designing such a system this is how I would make it work.

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. I figure that the hands-on requirements are always in effect now, whether or not Highway Assist is activated. (If you take your hands off the wheel at any time, I imagine that the car almost immediately protests.) When the hands-off feature is enabled, and only when Highway Assist is activated, I figured that the hands-on requirement would be turned off UNLESS the eyes-on monitoring is not comfortable that you are watching the road. If it's not, it would allow Highway Assist to continue running, but would initiate the hands-on requirement.

 

[borski]

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. I figure that the hands-on requirements are always in effect now, whether or not Highway Assist is activated. (If you take your hands off the wheel at any time, I imagine that the car almost immediately protests.) When the hands-off feature is enabled, and only when Highway Assist is activated, I figured that the hands-on requirement would be turned off UNLESS the eyes-on monitoring is not comfortable that you are watching the road. If it's not, it would allow Highway Assist to continue running, but would initiate the hands-on requirement.

Yes, that’s my guess. Although right now it does take 15 seconds to trigger the torque sensing.

 

[Haggy]

Unfortunately, because the wheel is torque-sensitive, the “nudge” is required. It has. I idea you have your hands on the wheel because it isn’t capacitive; it cannot sense you there. Triggering the torque sensor will always require some force.

My guess as to how they’ll do the hands free ADAS is by using the interior camera that stares at your face; otherwise they’d have to replace the steering wheels, which they’re not going to do.

They could maybe increase the time, but I’m not sure if those are defined by law or not.

I suspect the eye-based one will be fine (if that’s what they decide to do) with torque as a fallback for if that fails for some reason. I’m guessing that would result in a lot fewer false positives.

The could implement the hands free simply by not checking to see if there's any torque. They are already checking people's attentiveness. Most cars on the road have nothing that checks to see whether or not anybody is holding the wheel, even though it's most important in cars with no ADAS at all. In the US, NY is the only state with an explicit law saying that drivers must keep at least one hand on the wheel when driving. There are no requirements to monitor driver attention, although it would be beneficial on all cars, especially those without ADAS.

If there are any specific laws or FMVSS requiring monitoring, I'm not aware of them. When people went after Tesla for not having any (originally, the message to hold the wheel came on only when the car didn't have a high enough confidence level, such as before going around a curve, not based on confidence in the driver) it wasn't because anybody accused Tesla of being non-compliant with any laws. It was because of idiots on Youtube who posted videos of themselves doing unsafe things, and people blaming Tesla for not trying to prevent it. That's why Tesla went so far as to have software algorithms to try to detect "cheat" devices such as weights. Nobody is going to go crazy in Internet forums asking why Lucid doesn't try to stop people from cheating. And there are other companies advertising hands free, including Tesla now for FSD (not for Autopilot), despite no specific laws that would exempt it.

Lucid monitors drivers so I'm not too worried about anybody trying to trick the car into thinking that they are holding the wheel. But it would be easy enough to do. I'm not trying to trick the car but I do have a problem with tendonitis, and it's more comfortable when I wrap my fingers around the wheel less. So I use a hand grip that's designed for a barbell, which I had to trim a bit for the steering wheel. That gives me a grip with a bigger circumference, but it does affect the balance of the wheel slightly. A side effect is that I rarely get nag messages. Ironically, if I get a message, it might take a slight jiggle or it might simply be a matter of letting go of the wheel for a second. Since I tend to move my hands where the car would steer anyway, which is not done consciously, I undo any consequence of a slight imbalance in the weight. So the warning is more of an indication that I am holding the wheel than one that I'm not.

I'm not suggesting that anybody do the same thing for the purpose of cheating, but I have found from experience with holding the wheel with virtually no pressure that the car does just fine in general when my hands aren't actively doing anything to affect the car's driving. That doesn't mean that I don't have to take over on occasion, but if the car didn't check for hands and I merely held the wheel loosely, I'd be fine.

 

[Haggy]

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. I figure that the hands-on requirements are always in effect now, whether or not Highway Assist is activated. (If you take your hands off the wheel at any time, I imagine that the car almost immediately protests.) When the hands-off feature is enabled, and only when Highway Assist is activated, I figured that the hands-on requirement would be turned off UNLESS the eyes-on monitoring is not comfortable that you are watching the road. If it's not, it would allow Highway Assist to continue running, but would initiate the hands-on requirement.

The easiest way to implement a hands on requirement is to have a message pop up telling users that they should keep their hands on the wheel at all times. There are plenty of things that drivers are required to do that cars don't check for. I'm pretty sure that the car does not check for hands on the wheel when Highway Assist is off, although I'd be fine with it, especially if it automatically turned Highway Assist on and warned drivers to hold the wheel if it detected that nobody was holding the wheel.

I had a problem with LIDAR not working, which has been fixed, but when I did have that problem a consequence was that the car did not do lane centering at certain speeds even though Highway Assist was turned on. So I had to do my own steering, and even with me doing 100% of the steering, I did get warnings about holding the wheel in situations where no torque was needed for long stretches. So it's clear to me that had it been turned off, with me doing the identical steering, I'd be getting messages to hold the wheel even when holding the wheel.

 

[Pragmatic]

If there are any specific laws or FMVSS requiring monitoring, I'm not aware of them. When people went after Tesla for not having any (originally, the message to hold the wheel came on only when the car didn't have a high enough confidence level, such as before going around a curve, not based on confidence in the driver) it wasn't because anybody accused Tesla of being non-compliant with any laws. It was because of idiots on Youtube who posted videos of themselves doing unsafe things, and people blaming Tesla for not trying to prevent it. That's why Tesla went so far as to have software algorithms to try to detect "cheat" devices such as weights. Nobody is going to go crazy in Internet forums asking why Lucid doesn't try to stop people from cheating. And there are other companies advertising hands free, including Tesla now for FSD (not for Autopilot), despite no specific laws that would exempt it.

FMVSS and State laws are not the sole determinant of how safety related systems are implemented.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) requires repeated seatbelt warnings for both front and rear seats if an OEM wants the highest rating.

Likewise Consumer Reports includes the effectiveness of systems monitoring the driver (eyes on the road and hands on the wheel systems) in their rating of ADAS.

While we may agree or disagree with these different groups mehods, one thing is certain - their ratings/reviews drive sales.

A five star rated vehicle from IIHS will get more consideration than a four star rated vehicle. This is true even if the only real difference is the rear seat belt warning in the five star rated vehicle.

Likewise some will select the vehicle that gets the higher ADAS rating from CR even if the only difference is the number and type of warnings to keep your hands on the wheel

 

[Haggy]

While we may agree or disagree with these different groups mehods, one thing is certain - their ratings/reviews drive sales.

A five star rated vehicle from IIHS will get more consideration than a four star rated vehicle. This is true even if the only real difference is the rear seat belt warning in the five star rated vehicle.

Likewise some will select the vehicle that gets the higher ADAS rating from CR even if the only difference is the number and type of warnings to keep your hands on the wheel

Unfortunately, the ratings systems fall far short of what they should be doing to be helpful. The idea behind NHTSA's system was supposed to be to differentiate vehicles. If it now says that they are essentially all good, that doesn't say much. They need to have testing standards that go far above what's required and truly show which vehicles are better.

I have nothing against IIHS rating things on available safety features. If I want to rely on any of them and turn them on, then I can take advantage of them. If somebody else chooses to turn off a feature, that won't make my car less safe. If they want to have standards for driver monitoring, it should go by what the car offers drivers, not what it imposes.

I'm all in favor of driver monitoring and would want to use it whether it's required or not, as long as it works well. Lucid's still needs some work. I'm all in favor of other people having and using it too, but I haven't seen a single study showing that a requirement to hold the wheel has any effect on accident rates. I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that if it's based on science, nobody is showing the data. However, it's fairly evident that if a person is looking in the right place, there's an expectation that the person is relatively attentive. But accidents happen all the time in vehicles with no monitoring, with no ADAS, and with drivers who were holding the wheel at the time of the accidents. I think that there's more than enough data to establish that holding the wheel is not an indication that the driver is paying attention.

Tesla went through a few iterations with NHTSA where they agreed to change things, such as checking more often to see if a driver is holding the wheel, not because NHTSA showed them that more frequent nags make the car safer, but because of anecdotal evidence that some people were not holding the wheel, or random complaints that checking every minute wasn't often enough. It was mostly because somebody posted a video and somebody else blamed Tesla for allowing stupid behavior that could have been done in any car.

 

[Haggy]

This just in: Hands free coming soon. Rawlinson not only said so in today's earnings call, he made a not so subtle slight at Musk and anybody else who preannounces far in advance and doesn't deliver. He said that companies should not announce things unless they are coming soon.