I've just had a wheel alignment and balance done and left rear toe angle was off by .37 degrees, and front left camber was out of spec as well. Done at Discount Tire for less than half what Tesla quoted me. $240 vs $500. They clearly don't want to do alignments. The left front camber adjustment is maxed out and barely in spec.
I've got another road trip coming up in about 3 weeks that will be about 4,500 miles roundtrip, so hopefully correcting the alignment issues will help with the "Wilson Weave" that was pretty annoying during my March trip. Was hoping to see a new FSD version for HW3 before we leave, but not looking likely.
Following up on this after the June road trip. The alignment got rid of the weaving as far as I can tell. The only time it got squirrely was when there were decently strong crosswinds, but that is excusable.
My assessment of 12.6.4 from March still holds up but there were a couple of new, pretty dangerous actions that are worth mentioning...
While driving in the Rockies in Colorado there is a series of tunnels you pass through. One of those is curved with 2 lanes going the same direction. As you approach you are in a left curve. I was in the left lane of the two. Upon entering the tunnel FSD allowed the car to drift into the right lane with no acknowledgement at all. No turn signal, no lane departure correction, just went for it and acted like nothing happened. Fortunately for me there were no cars near me for quite a distance. The lanes were well marked, but I think the transition from bright sunshine to dimly lit tunnel cooked its brain for a second.
At a 4 way stop light, It stopped then proceeded to go forward straight into traffic on the red. It happened twice during the trip. I have no theories as to why.
This happened in St Louis I believe. As we are approaching a "Y" split in rush hour traffic we needed to take the left branch and are in the leftmost ongoing lane navigation can't decide which way to go. It twitches back and forth and runs out of road, almost plowing into the concrete barrier that separates the two branches. There was not a car to the direct left of us or any other impediment. I had to force the issue to avoid either an emergency stop with cars behind us, or plowing into the barrier. That one scared me a bit. The weather was clear but again I think HW3 may have just overloaded and silently gave up.
I have mentioned this one before but it bears repeating. It's really bad that it doesn't obey 'no turn on red' stops, construction zones, school zones. Unless you are following someone who slows down for them, you will cruise right along at full speed.
More on Hurry mode behavior. Using the recommended 40% setting and the speed limit at 65 it will choose 75mph as an average speed but will vary all over the place as usual. At 75 mph speed limit its average is around 80mph. 80mph speed limit - 82-83 set point. It looks to always be splitting the difference between what it thinks the speed limit is and the MAX speed setting, which in all those cases was 85mph. When speed limits are low (25-45mph) the percentage variance is a menace. a 35mph speed limit at 40% setting means max speed limit is set to 49mph. This is way too fast to be save is a 35mph speed zone.
I would recommend one big change to Hurry mode:
Make it stop favoring the left lane. There is no reason to go to the leftmost lane on the highway when there are no outside factors influencing it. It does this on an empty multi-lane highway, no cars for half a mile in either direction and it will still find its way to the leftmost lane right away. Some states have "stay right except to pass" laws. Related to that, it waits too long to move to the right when a faster vehicle approaches from behind. They more or less have to ride you pretty close before it decides to move to the right, IF it decides to move to the right. I ended up flipping to Standard mode to make it move right immediately, then back to Hurry mode to move back left as needed, since those changes seem to be priority one for those two modes.
FSD in general is still good but still needs to be better. I really like not needing to hold the steering wheel anymore.
It is WAY too insistent when it wants to change lanes. It wanted to move left to go around a slower semi in heavy traffic with an off-ramp 0.8 miles away. I cancelled it with the stalk twice just for it to immediately attempt the lane change again. I held the stalk the third time to no avail and had to take over because the traffic in front was too dense for it (or myself) to have had time to get 3 lanes back to the right to make the exit. Its inability to just hold a certain speed takes a lot of the benefit out of using it.
Lighten up on the "stare straight ahead" nag. It actually doesn't matter if you're paying attention, just that you're looking out the windshield. I experimented a little and simply stared straight ahead for several miles, not moving my eyes or head at all (paying a lot of attention to what was in my periphery and when traffic was very light) and it didn't care. Its not looking for eye movement or head movement at all, so its not a very good monitor. You could be stoned to the gills, sit and zone out while staring straight ahead, and it would think you are 'paying attention'.
NOTE: I do not suggest or condone this behavior. If you do this you are an idiot. Was just using it as an extreme example.
Pick a damn speed! The "going with the flow of traffic" logic is not being a polite driver because it increases speed when being passed on the left, making you seem like a jerk. When there are no vehicles close enough to influence its speed choices, it slows down below the posted limit. I've chosen Hurry mode darn it, at least go back to the 'halfway between MAX and posted speed limit' speed.
Passing someone with pressure from behind causes it to move back to the right lane, but then it immediately slows down in front of the just passed vehicle. This is also a jerk move and likely to get you some unwanted hand signals.
Give me the option to set a flat +/- speed variance instead of the percentage. Then a quick flip of the wheel control would work for fine tuning.
This was going to be a short follow-up post. Oops. Thanks for reading.
