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Ford adaptive cruise 312a vs standard tesla autopilot
Wsl346
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I’m assuming you are wanting a comparison between Ford’s and Tesla’s lane centering technology?
In short, Tesla’s AP is significantly more competent. Ford’s lane centering is decent when the lane markers are clear and curves in the road are not too sharp but AP is an order of magnitude better at staying center in your lane even when conditions are not ideal.
What I do appreciate about Ford’s system is that the system stays active even if you make a small manual correction. I find AP really annoying when you want to make a slight reposition in the lane and it kicks you out. And while AP is the more mature and robust system, I feel that when it messes up, it really messes up and scares the crap out of me.
In short, Tesla’s AP is significantly more competent. Ford’s lane centering is decent when the lane markers are clear and curves in the road are not too sharp but AP is an order of magnitude better at staying center in your lane even when conditions are not ideal.
What I do appreciate about Ford’s system is that the system stays active even if you make a small manual correction. I find AP really annoying when you want to make a slight reposition in the lane and it kicks you out. And while AP is the more mature and robust system, I feel that when it messes up, it really messes up and scares the crap out of me.
GoodSam
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Do not know how Tesla feels, but I like the XLT 312A adaptive cruise option, just have my hand with light pressure on one side of the steering wheel and it will stay in one position in the lane fairly well. And adaptive cruise keeps me safe from collisions due to my lack of paying attention 99% of the time. Cannot imagine eventually having to pay a subscription for BlueCruise. Would love to have a competent robot driving for me while I nod off, but still a "Waze" to go.
hturnerfamily
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I've driven both, and driven them VERY LONG miles on interstates, as well as rural roads.
The Tesla Model 3 Long Range gave me many SCARES at 70mph when it wanted to SUDDENLY take me off an interstate exit ramp! I understand why, buy 'why' it is allowed to DO this, is the problem. You see, when a right-hand road stripe suddenly is not there, such as some interstate exits, in some states, where the stripe literally disappears, the car's software 'thinks' about what's happening, and decides to take the DEFAULT stripe, the right side, as where it should go, rather than continuing to FOLLOW the one that is still there, the LEFT stripe.
I added Lane Centering on my PRO, and it works just fine. Yes, there are still times when you might see a similar situation with the Ford software, as it is not perfect, either, but it does not seem to have these problems at 70mph on interstates, or interstate exits.
I will say, though, that the Ford's 'Alert' software is barking way too often, and I solved that by adding a 'workout' wrist weight, which is about 1 lb., to my right-side of the steering wheel. It works just fine, and the alerts are now gone.
The BEST LaneCentering ACC is my wife's KIA EV9. They have the software down pat, and it works just like it's supposed to, by reading BOTH road stripes, and, if there is any deviation, it STAYS with the current straight line, whether that be the left, or the right, if one disappears. It does have the steering wheel 'ALERT', but it is WAY less often than Ford's, and not NEAR as annoying, and you simply 'touch' the steering wheel and it senses your human - no need to 'torque' the wheel. Easy.
The Tesla Model 3 Long Range gave me many SCARES at 70mph when it wanted to SUDDENLY take me off an interstate exit ramp! I understand why, buy 'why' it is allowed to DO this, is the problem. You see, when a right-hand road stripe suddenly is not there, such as some interstate exits, in some states, where the stripe literally disappears, the car's software 'thinks' about what's happening, and decides to take the DEFAULT stripe, the right side, as where it should go, rather than continuing to FOLLOW the one that is still there, the LEFT stripe.
I added Lane Centering on my PRO, and it works just fine. Yes, there are still times when you might see a similar situation with the Ford software, as it is not perfect, either, but it does not seem to have these problems at 70mph on interstates, or interstate exits.
I will say, though, that the Ford's 'Alert' software is barking way too often, and I solved that by adding a 'workout' wrist weight, which is about 1 lb., to my right-side of the steering wheel. It works just fine, and the alerts are now gone.
The BEST LaneCentering ACC is my wife's KIA EV9. They have the software down pat, and it works just like it's supposed to, by reading BOTH road stripes, and, if there is any deviation, it STAYS with the current straight line, whether that be the left, or the right, if one disappears. It does have the steering wheel 'ALERT', but it is WAY less often than Ford's, and not NEAR as annoying, and you simply 'touch' the steering wheel and it senses your human - no need to 'torque' the wheel. Easy.
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tls
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We have owned Teslas going back to 2015 and have a 2022 F150L with BlueCruise.
In my opinion the BlueCruise stack is more reliable and safer than the Tesla stack.
Autopilot has had terrible problems since Elon got in a spitting match with their original technology supplier and decided to replace it all c. 2017. The worst of these is sudden deceleration at or near overpasses and road signs. Supposedly, disabling the radar built into older Teslas like my 2020 Y was supposed to fix this. Actually it seems to have made it worse. Introduction of "FSD" features like stop light/stop sign braking increases the risk of being rear-ended even further, as the car will now brake randomly when it sees a red light on an adjacent service road, or a stop sign at the end of an adjacent on-ramp while travelling in the right lane. The very latest "FSD" software seems to make this a little better but the random braking is still noticeable - it just recovers sooner. My wife will no longer use cruise control at all on our Model Y because she's had so many scares from it. Traffic here is tight and if Autopilot jams the brakes from 55MPH to 35MPH or below due to an overpass or phantom stoplight, there's a big risk the driver behind won't react in time.
Tesla Autopilot also seems to have a big problem with suddenly disabling itself under just barely more steering-wheel torque than is required to let it detect that you're there. This is especially bad when already going around a curve. It'll start to flash warnings to let it know you're there by turning the wheel, then as soon as you've satisfied it by applying just a little more torque, it will decide you want to drive and disable itself - leaving you out of line going around an exit ramp or whatever. Changes to the torque detection over the past few years evidently prompted by jerks hanging Coke cans on the wheel to avoid the attention nagging have made this worse, I think.
I don't think we've ever had the random-braking problem with BlueCruise and since steering wheel input doesn't disable BC, even in hands-on mode we haven't had the "oops it turned off mid-curve" problem either. Lane positioning was perhaps not quite as good as Autopilot (and still isn't as good as FSD) but upgrades to BC 1.3/1.4 have improved that dramatically and I think it's very good now. And I've never seen it follow an exit ramp stripe off the edge of the highway as the Tesla software has historically been prone to do (don't even get me started on FSD deciding the shoulder is a "right turn ramp" and driving up the shoulder then running red lights turning right without stopping!). On the minus side, it indeed isn't as good on really right curves as modern Tesla software and BC 1.4's "predictive speed control" in my opinion was released before it was fully baked - it does not slow at all on a lot of tight exit ramps and slows suddenly under inappropriate conditions e.g. slowing to on-ramp speed if it decides it's on a ramp paralleling the highway when it's actually in the highway's main traffic flow. This is especially bad with left exits/entrances and there are a lot of those on older highways around here like I-84 through Connecticut. But predictive speed control can be turned off, and since BC has no nav integration (no "navigate on autopilot" there is no need to let it drive around on/off ramps anyhow.
The Tesla stack has other useful features like automatic lane change to maintain speed etc. but if turned on globally they require manual settings every drive (turning on "minimal lane change") to not drive like a 20 year old menace. Given the other differences I have to assume if Ford ever releases similar functionality it will not be so obnoxious towards other drivers or scary for passengers. And none of them, for me at least, are as useful as BC's hands-off mode on a long highway drive.
From my point of view BlueCruise does less but does it better. I often wished I could have the other features of our 2020 Model Y but with the simple, functional Autopilot 1.0 that we originally got for our 2015 Model S, instead of the crazy, feature-laden, unreliable, scary mess Tesla made afterwards. For me, BlueCruise is very close to that, so I prefer it.
In my opinion the BlueCruise stack is more reliable and safer than the Tesla stack.
Autopilot has had terrible problems since Elon got in a spitting match with their original technology supplier and decided to replace it all c. 2017. The worst of these is sudden deceleration at or near overpasses and road signs. Supposedly, disabling the radar built into older Teslas like my 2020 Y was supposed to fix this. Actually it seems to have made it worse. Introduction of "FSD" features like stop light/stop sign braking increases the risk of being rear-ended even further, as the car will now brake randomly when it sees a red light on an adjacent service road, or a stop sign at the end of an adjacent on-ramp while travelling in the right lane. The very latest "FSD" software seems to make this a little better but the random braking is still noticeable - it just recovers sooner. My wife will no longer use cruise control at all on our Model Y because she's had so many scares from it. Traffic here is tight and if Autopilot jams the brakes from 55MPH to 35MPH or below due to an overpass or phantom stoplight, there's a big risk the driver behind won't react in time.
Tesla Autopilot also seems to have a big problem with suddenly disabling itself under just barely more steering-wheel torque than is required to let it detect that you're there. This is especially bad when already going around a curve. It'll start to flash warnings to let it know you're there by turning the wheel, then as soon as you've satisfied it by applying just a little more torque, it will decide you want to drive and disable itself - leaving you out of line going around an exit ramp or whatever. Changes to the torque detection over the past few years evidently prompted by jerks hanging Coke cans on the wheel to avoid the attention nagging have made this worse, I think.
I don't think we've ever had the random-braking problem with BlueCruise and since steering wheel input doesn't disable BC, even in hands-on mode we haven't had the "oops it turned off mid-curve" problem either. Lane positioning was perhaps not quite as good as Autopilot (and still isn't as good as FSD) but upgrades to BC 1.3/1.4 have improved that dramatically and I think it's very good now. And I've never seen it follow an exit ramp stripe off the edge of the highway as the Tesla software has historically been prone to do (don't even get me started on FSD deciding the shoulder is a "right turn ramp" and driving up the shoulder then running red lights turning right without stopping!). On the minus side, it indeed isn't as good on really right curves as modern Tesla software and BC 1.4's "predictive speed control" in my opinion was released before it was fully baked - it does not slow at all on a lot of tight exit ramps and slows suddenly under inappropriate conditions e.g. slowing to on-ramp speed if it decides it's on a ramp paralleling the highway when it's actually in the highway's main traffic flow. This is especially bad with left exits/entrances and there are a lot of those on older highways around here like I-84 through Connecticut. But predictive speed control can be turned off, and since BC has no nav integration (no "navigate on autopilot" there is no need to let it drive around on/off ramps anyhow.
The Tesla stack has other useful features like automatic lane change to maintain speed etc. but if turned on globally they require manual settings every drive (turning on "minimal lane change") to not drive like a 20 year old menace. Given the other differences I have to assume if Ford ever releases similar functionality it will not be so obnoxious towards other drivers or scary for passengers. And none of them, for me at least, are as useful as BC's hands-off mode on a long highway drive.
From my point of view BlueCruise does less but does it better. I often wished I could have the other features of our 2020 Model Y but with the simple, functional Autopilot 1.0 that we originally got for our 2015 Model S, instead of the crazy, feature-laden, unreliable, scary mess Tesla made afterwards. For me, BlueCruise is very close to that, so I prefer it.
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Effonefiddy Lightning
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My wife drives a Mosel Y, what he
said is exactly what I think of the two.Joneii
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Ditto on tls’s assessment. I actually don’t use autopilot in my Model Y unless there are no other vehicles around. It just isn’t worth the risk. I use Blue Cruise all the time—it doesn’t scare me.
SpaceEVDriver
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I was a passenger in a Model X using its fsd and it stopped in the middle of a highway when it was suppose to make a left turn off the highway. It just sat there in the middle of the highway, halfway across the double solid yellow, not knowing what to do. I'll stick with a system that's built by people who are self-aware enough to know their system is not smart enough to do things it's not smart enough to do.
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