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The actual benefit is to have the car handles itself in situation where you would be distracted regardless. I engage similar system on my car before fiddling w
by gutnor 8y ago
The actual benefit is to have the car handles itself in situation where you would be distracted regardless.
I engage similar system on my car before fiddling with the attention seeking touch screen, or when I need to give a quick look at the kids behind. Another is traffic jam: a lot of nothing going followed by a lot of things going on - focus on the wrong thing and you can rear end somebody. Minor benefit are some fuel saving if you are a "dynamic" driver, and it can make you more relax in stressful situation like the traffic jam above.
That's just to answer your question. I completely agree with you that the feature is overhyped, not worth paying much for it and actively promoting dangerous driving behaviour. However, it nowadays comes nearly for free as a consequence of other very useful systems: the whole set of emergency braking scenario (emergency, cruise control, safety distance, pedestrian, ...), line keeping assist, blind spot monitoring. It has its uses, if you remain aware of its shortcomings.
- abalone 8y agoBut don't Tesla's have Collision Avoidance Assist on by default? That's a distinct feature from autopilot. That's primarily what helps out in situations that you've noted. Autopilot basically adds autosteering to that. Seems to me that could lull you into more distracted situations that collision avoidance is unable to cope with. Note: autopilot and collision avoidance both came out around the same time, so it's far from clear that autopilot has resulted in a reduction in accident rates, or if it was mostly just the collision avoidance.
- userbinator 8y agobefore fiddling with the attention seeking touch screen ...in other words, the feature partially works around some of the problems they introduced themselves by using an overly complex touchscreen UI instead of the traditional no-eyes-needed buttons and knobs.
- vsl 8y agoI haven’t seen a non-touchscreen media player in a new mid- to upper-range car in a long time...