Tag: Tesla

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

One of the things that bothered me for a long time about electric cars is range anxiety. Maybe because I’ve almost run out of gas many times, or because I sometimes have a few days with lots of driving. In any case, I often worried that I’d run out of charge. I used to feel that way about my phone, though I have gotten used to running low on power at times.

The same thing has happened in the Model Y. It’s almost two months, and I’ll do a mini review next week on how I feel, but for now, I’ve come to grips with the fact that I don’t worry about range in my daily life anymore.

When I picked up the car, it was set to charge to 90%. I wrote about the charging experience, and have since gotten even more relaxed. The car has a scheduled charge set (another blog coming), and when I plug it in, by 7am the next day it gets to 83% charge.

Often I drive it and the charge only goes down to the low 70s or high 60s on many days. On those days, I sometimes don’t bother to plug it in again. I often don’t have plans that will require a lot more than my normal 20-50 miles, so I just let the car sit.

On the second (or third) day, I will be driving around and see the charge drop to 50%, sometimes even into the low 40s. Surprisingly this is more of a cue I need to plug in the charger that night rather than worry if I’ll be able to get home.

So far, no long trips. This week I’ve started to drive more, as coaching has started, so we’ll see how that changes my attitude, and if this continues in the winter. Already I’m starting to use the seat heaters, so I’m definitely consuming more power.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

The other day the cruise control in the Tesla stopped. I was moving along a road, heard a beep, and then realized the car was slowing quickly. I have the regenerative braking set to the aggresive mode, and so the car was quickly moving from 40mph towards 0. I pressed the accelerator and didn’t think more of it.

Then it happened again a day or two later. Then again.

The third time, I realized each time it had been at night, on a narrow road that has some quick up and down hills. The car has often slowed a bit coming up over the hill, but these times I had been using cruise control to keep the speed steady as I returned home.

The manual notes that autosteer, which I think includes the cruise capabilities as they act similar, can turn off temporarily. Not what you want in a car trying to get to Level 5 autonomy.

My suspicion is that this is because the rapidly rising road seems like an obstructed view. Careful drivers probably slow slightly coming up over the rise, and I have if there is a biker or car on the side of the road. However, the human thing is to assume the road is clear, which is should be, and then brake hard if it’s not. Telsa seems more conservative and tries not to get into the place where it brakes in an emergency.

That’s not a great view, in my opinion. Most cars with adaptive cruise will hold the speed unless there is an obstruction, which shouldn’t be the case with a rising road. I’ve driven cars that did this well, not braking unless a car was actually in front of me.

I wish there were a “report” button on the display that would let me tag a moment with +/- 2 minutes around it and then later add a note to send to Tesla on how the behavior. I realize this would be a lot of reports, but this is the type of feedback they could use to improve their AI/ML models.

Actually, I can give feedback, so I’ll try that the next time something weird happens.

I don’t find this to be a safety issue, as I should be ready to take over, and if the car isn’t sure what to do, then be conservative. I just wish I could let it know that this isn’t a place it needs to be that careful.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

Before we could get our car, we needed to make our down payment for the car. I wrote about the ordering experience. Part of that process was choosing the loan (or case or lease) and payment. I had left it near the default of US$4500 and two days before our pickup appointment, we got an email that we needed to check the paperwork and make the payment.

As we logged on to the Tesla site, part of the workflow asked us for the credentials for our bank account.

Wha?!?!?!

We backed out and looked again and sure enough, when you click make payment, you get a popup from the Tesla site asking for your bank (Wells Fargo for us) and your login credentials.

This isn’t a recurring payment, and this isn’t from Tesla. The fine print shows this is from Plaid, a financial company. Lots of banks use their service, and maybe I use them for something, but I hadn’t seen a request to give my credentials to a third party. This is apparently a model being used as other businesses ask this from customers.

I’m not comfortable.

A Workaround

Fortunately, I searched and found a few posts from Tesla owners. This one noted that you can click the “X” in the dialog and then get a popup to enter the bank routing information. We did that, and it worked fine.

I think this is a poor business model. I’m not even sure this is legal with some of the computer security acts in the US. While some posts indicate this generates a token from your bank that is used for access, I think providing login credentials is a problem.

If you run into this with any other company, I’d try clicking the X and using a semi-more secure method of entering routing and account info.

The other day I had to run an errand early in the morning. I happened to follow the route I used to travel daily to take my kids to school. I had to pass the elementary school near my house and then the high school.

In neither of these cases was I using Autopilot. I find it to be a bit unnerving on busy country roads with no median. There’s a bias towards the middle of the road, and often I see drivers coming towards me staring at their phones, so I reserve Autopilot for those times when no one else is on the road. If I see a car, I disable it.

I was using cruise control, however, and as I approached the active school zones, I turned it off. There weren’t any incidents, but the recognition of the road conditions by the Tesla OS (?) was disturbing to me.

For both of these schools, they are facing a busy road. The elementary school is on a 45mph road. In the morning and afternoon, as school opens and closes, there is an hour during each time period where a flashing yellow light highlights a 20mph speed limit sign.

Some people don’t see this, which is scary. There is a fence to keep kids back, this is still a little scary for me, even though my kids are adults. However, most people slow down, and that often gets humans who notice the change in speed to slow down. Not to 20mph, but I think most get down to 30mph.

The Tesla usually notes speed limit signs. However, as I slowed into the zone and passed the 20mph sign, the Tesla still displayed 45mph on the console. The was repeated near the high school. That road is a 35mph zone, but has the flashing yellow above a 25mph sign.

In both cases, I would think this is an easy AI/ML thing to recognize.

What’s confusing to me is that the OS usually finds other signs. There is a construction area just West of my house, where the road detours slightly. There are orange signs propped up on the side of the road (along with cones) that note the speed limit goes from 40mph to 35mph to 25 mph. The Tesla recognizes and displays all these changes.

When it sees a 40mph sign after emerging Southbound, it displays 40mph. Northbound, there is no speed limit sign after leaving the construction area. The Tesla continues to display 25mph for the next mile or two, while most humans realize the 25mpg no long applies. At least, I doubt a police officer would stop anyone for doing 40mph, though technically the limit is likely still 25mph without a sign.

I’ve seen a few posts that Teslas don’t quite get school zones for some reason. This isnt’ an area where Autopilot should be used, IMHO, though I suspect there are people using the Full Self Driving near schools.

I have often used cruise control in these zones, set to 20mph or 25mph, since the two near my house are rather long, but I haven’t trusted Tesla to enable it in this case. In other cars, I slow to 20 and then press a button, which keeps the car moving slow.

I don’t know how other car companies might approach this, but I do think that school zones are one of those difficult cases that appear easy to recognize as humans, but might not be as easy for computers. This certainly is one of those situations that might prevent Level 5 driving from being accepted by many.

I love the car, but I continue to respect that using some of the driver assist features means these are assisting you, not driving for you.

There’s a video of this post as well.