[47of74]

I was in St. Louis a few weeks ago visiting my sister and brother in-law and their feline kiddos. Since there is a Tesla store in the St. Louis area I took the opportunity to go there and check out the vehicles.

I was able to test drive a Model S with an autopilot. It has the autopilot feature so the sales person had me turn that on then let go of the wheel to see the car driving itself. I had to resist taking over a couple times because it seemed to get pretty close to vehicles in adjoining lanes. I really liked the amount of pep the car had. You hit the accelerator on the Model S and it will move for you.

I'm not planning on getting a Tesla. Maybe if the Model 3 does good I'll consider one of those but at this point my two strongest candidates are either a Gen 2 Volt or a Bolt.

 

[Tomt]

We won a 24 hour take home drive of a Tesla P90D last month... We put about 350 miles on it! When I was testing autopilot, it performed a function that amazed me! We were on the freeway at about 65 when a truck comes down the entry ramp and cuts me off... I expected Autopilot to slam on the brakes but instead, it performed a lane change one lane over to the left... Apparently it had "seen" that that lane was clear and decided that was a better maneuver.. Very impressive!

 

[scottf200]

We won a 24 hour take home drive of a Tesla P90D last month... We put about 350 miles on it! When I was testing autopilot, it performed a function that amazed me! We were on the freeway at about 65 when a truck comes down the entry ramp and cuts me off... I expected Autopilot to slam on the brakes but instead, it performed a lane change one lane over to the left... Apparently it had "seen" that that lane was clear and decided that was a better maneuver.. Very impressive!

Interesting. I have not seen that but I've been on some fairly busy roads so there was probably cars next to me when something liked that happened. It did on Sunday, as a matter of fact, and I did a full click down on the cruise control which drops in 5 mph increments.

I've taken 3 road trips probably 1800 miles in total. I've used auto-pilot for probably 95% of those miles. It is very impressive and it really does some interesting things. If a car cuts in front of you (less than your distance setting) then your Tesla may or may not slow down as it will depend on how fast it sees that car moving away from you. ie. your car won't slow down it the car is pulling away fast. The Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC - like Adapt Cruise Control) works great and I have it set on the max of 7 which is like a 2 second rule driving at 65 mph. It really is smooth and more complicated than you'd think based on many situations that happen.

Lane changing works really well BUT you have to still pay full attention and check your mirrors first because fast moving cars from behind are beyond the rear sensors as the move up to you quick.