Highway Assist - First Impressions

[Rade]

I used to swear I would never want a vehicle that would "drive for me". And then I got old and realized in recent years that I was dodging a lot figurative bullets on the road. Blind spots, my own failing peripheral vision (not seeing vehicles coming at me until I was feet from them), unable to keep to my lane... a lot. Not distracted driving, just... driving that had been getting ...worse over the years.

We had rented a Tesla model X for a weekend last fall. That was the first time I had the opportunity to try a vehicle with driver assist capabilities. I found that the car "pin-balled" down the road, not really straight and steady. It was disconcerting and I did not really feel safe with the function engaged.

On my R1T, I had been using the speed sensitive cruise control a lot, but I really did not understand that my Rivian R1T came with a similar feature until I watched a YouTube video about the prior software push, and how part of the upgrade was an update to the Highway assist feature. Then "Out Of Spec Review" did a road test, showed how to activate it, and gave it a good review. Today, we went on a regional road trip of errands that had us predominantly on the Interstate for about 40 miles. "Okay! Here goes!" and I double tapped the stalk. The blue line filled in on my console map and... the R1T started driving! Straight. Solid. Even perfectly followed the arc of the road around bends. Lane changes went smoothly. If I removed my hand or fingers from the steering wheel for more than 15 or so seconds, a warning would pop up on the drivers console. I WAS IMPRESSED!

Worked well, no "Pin-balling", when the traffic got thick, it adjusted accordingly.

In the end... I felt safe. Very, very safe.

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[KBabione]

That's great - Thanks for posting and I'm sorry you waited so long to try it! I use it frequently, but you need to understand its limitations. Do yourself a favor and disengage it when you hit construction of any kind. I find that it works great in start/stop traffic, but if you're in an area where people are merging into your lane just disengage and re-engage later.

 

[DayTripping]

Curious what was wrong with the X you drove. My Teslas are rock solid with no weaving. I just used full self driving (FSD), door to door for 35 miles today starting in downtown Dallas to way in the norther suburbs in pretty heavy traffic and it didn't have a single misstep. It worked on roads that my Rivian just throws up its hands and says it can't do. Even my wife didn't utter a peep the entire drive. Tesla has finally got to the point where it doesn't stress me out half the time. I have a good idea where I might need to intervene. It has matured from a 16 year old driver to somewhere in their late teens.

I still want to drive my car most of the time, but having a break is nice. Especially in bumper to bumper traffic and that is where I seem to use it the most. I don't want FSD on my Rivian, but something much better than what they have now would be nice. If I had to pay for Rivian's driving assist, I wouldn't give them a dime for either Gen. The areas where you can use either Gen is very limited.

Maybe with the Gen3 trucks, it will be worth having. Rivian just seems so far behind a lot of other companies I am not sure how quickly they'll be within sniffing distance of the leaders. They went from saying autonomous driving wasn't really on their roadmap to look how much we can improve by next year on the Gen2 trucks. RJ is sounding more like Elon to me unfortunately. I decided to hedge my bets and buy Comma.Ai and the Comma 3x to get the driving assist I want now rather than waiting for vaporware. Check out the vids in the forum to see how well that project is coming along if you have seen it. It actually works on secondary roads.

 

[Johnus]

I have a Model X loaner right now, and I must +1 Rade's experience with it. I trust my R1T driving itself far more than the X. The X loves to drift all over the lane, particularly when the lane opens up to a fork or ramp. I've had no such issue in the R1T.

Taking control from the X when it's about to do something stupid is also very jarring. The car lurches a bit when I turn the wheel, completely disengaging the system. The R1T lets me take control smoothly for corrections, and then resumes automatically if I'm switching lanes.

The X's cameras love to hallucinate. Today it showed the car surrounded by 12+ people, it looked like I was being attacked by a mob of zombies. There was a single guy walking to his car parked next to me. Once he got in his car, the zombies disappeared.

I can't wait to see what Rivian brings to the system this year.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

thanks for sharing!

Tesla AP, on the highway, is the gold standard IMO. GM super cruise and Ford Blue Cruise are also really good.

I’ll be doing some more thorough testing on Gen2 very soon…but my limited experience so far with the RAP has been very good….but I’m reserving my final verdict until I can get more time with Gen 2 to put it through its paces. Which will be very soon ?

I find these ADAS, when they work as intended, take most of the stress out of commuting and long road trips.

 

[NDIrish]

Just drove from CA to AZ and used the auto a lot:

Adaptive cruise is GREAT, could accelerate back to speed a little quicker, but you can manually do that to overcome, so not a big deal.

My R1T feels like it pinballs a lot in corners and coming out of corners, is ok in straights, except feels it hugs to the right too much, makes me nervous when I pass semis... Especially if windy, I feel its too close on passenger side and a gust would just be enough to cause an issue, about 3 times in 5 hours of driving I was nudging it back left enough to disengage the auto.

Definitely very useful, definitely brings the stress level down if you use it as assist... No way would I call it self driving. Glad I have it, use it when I can. But it is nowhere near self driving, it just a strong assist.

That's my thoughts at this point

 

[iansriv]

@DayTripping (Tim)-does AC not work above 85mph? Asking for a friend.

 

[lyonothecoast]

Prior 2018 Model 3 owner with “advanced autopilot”, current 2024 R1T owner. I’m struggling to adjust. I’ve found the speed sensitive cruise (even when on the shortest distance marker) is overly sensitive to vehicles far ahead. Further I don’t know why gentle curves on interstate throttle back (decelerate) as much as 5 mph. It’s just not smooth. Auto lane change is ok but it’s really the cruise that make me not want to engage it.

 

[frannypack_704]

My Model S never pinballed. Can't speak for Rivian but the Tesla system is constantly pushed updates and grows by leaps and bounds. Every update was exciting and the improvements were very noticable.

I'm hopeful that Rivian gets with it before the tech gap gets too big. I like driving but there is something nice about turning it on and letting it do all the work.

 

[Seano]

I have tried it a few times, but I’m curious the use case.

It reminds me of when I used to drive quite fast: monitoring the road and radar detector to avoid tickets added much more stress than just setting the cruise at a reasonable speed.

In my view right now, it needs so much over Watch, it adds stress - as opposed to ACC, which really seems to reduce stress while driving.

Definitely going to explore its use and love reading others’ experience.

 

[DayTripping]

@DayTripping (Tim)-does AC not work above 85mph? Asking for a friend.

They've played with the speed settings for AP (I assume that is what you meant). I think it is currently at 85mph last time I checked. The problem with that is in Texas there are some speed limits that are 85.

The problem is the car is basing the AP speed on its speedo which is often a bit lower than actual. Factor in traffic going faster than the speed limit isn't usable in that scenario.

My Model 3 Long Range's speedo is off by about 2-3% so it does impact the AP's usability in some scenarios.

 

[SANZC02]

Just drove from CA to AZ and used the auto a lot:

Adaptive cruise is GREAT, could accelerate back to speed a little quicker, but you can manually do that to overcome, so not a big deal.

My R1T feels like it pinballs a lot in corners and coming out of corners, is ok in straights, except feels it hugs to the right too much, makes me nervous when I pass semis... Especially if windy, I feel its too close on passenger side and a gust would just be enough to cause an issue, about 3 times in 5 hours of driving I was nudging it back left enough to disengage the auto.

Definitely very useful, definitely brings the stress level down if you use it as assist... No way would I call it self driving. Glad I have it, use it when I can. But it is nowhere near self driving, it just a strong assist.

That's my thoughts at this point

After 2 years of updates Rivian has done a decent job in the areas of not over-reacting to cars coming into the lane in front of me as well as less delay getting back up to speed. I think we will continue seeing those types of improvements on the G1 vehicles over time.

I have AP1 in my Tesla and with the exception of being geo-fenced to mapped roads my R1S is pretty much on par with the Tesla AP1. I use both quite a bit on the open highways when on a trip.

 

[pamalabama]

We had rented a Tesla model X for a weekend last fall. That was the first time I had the opportunity to try a vehicle with driver assist capabilities. I found that the car "pin-balled" down the road, not really straight and steady. It was disconcerting and I did not really feel safe with the function engaged.

Your experience makes zero sense. Tesla autopilot is easily the straightest ADAS system in any car. Drives dead centered on every curve and takes even steep curves dead in the center. The tradeoff is it does take the curves with higher g-forces as a result.

 

[pamalabama]

This post is completely wrong. Tesla is the straightest ADAS system you can buy in a car. No car goes as straight or as dead centered when taking steep curves. The tradeoff is that it takes them pretty hard

Tesla FSD takes them more naturally in terms of speed and lane selection. But there is zero ping-ponging on any tesla vehicles

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