Long car trip, rent a Tesla for free.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

In many states people can die if they break down along the road and their are laws to punish motorists who pass cars stopped along the road with out stopping and offering assistance. I ran into that in North Dakota. I passed a guy changing a tire on a two lane highway and was pulled over and given a warning. The Dept of Transportation had a lot of service announcements about carrying winter survival kits in cars, duty to stop and offer assistance. etc.

A high school buddy had a much older sister that was a nurse at a reservation hospital in Arizona. Back in the early 1970's, He and a relative broke down somewhere on the reservation and he said they waited for hours and no cars came by and they ended up walking ten miles at night to find a house, and there was no auto or phone there. The person that owned the house put a special flag up his flag pole to summon help which arrived a few hours later.

[Bob Turkovich]

Just curious. Is the self-driving feature disabled when you rent a Tesla?

[Jim Becker]

Just curious. Is the self-driving feature disabled when you rent a Tesla?

It's only available if licensed and I sure hope it's disabled on a rental!

[Bill Dufour]

It's only available if licensed and I sure hope it's disabled on a rental!

The online instructions say it has autopilot speed control and auto steer to stay within the lanes. Of course they have weasel words saying driver is responsible to keep car under control at all times. Hands on the wheel at all times etc. You can set the automatic following distance as well.
I believe automatic emergency braking is default on the model 3. The driver has to do something to turn it off at every startup.
Bill D

[Jim Becker]

A lot of vehicles have adaptive cruise control and lane centering these days in addition to both forward and rear collision sensing/braking. That's not full autopilot when it comes to Tesla but as you mention, the lane centering feature, regardless of make and model is not supposed to be "hands free". It's an assist but one's hands are supposed to at least be lightly engaged with the steering wheel.

[Derek Meyer]

My 2020 Ford Edge has the lane-keeping assist, the adaptive cruise control with configurable follow distance, and emergency braking. These systems do not add up to an autopilot, and the car will chime a warning at you if your hands are off the wheel for more than 5 seconds. If you don't take the wheel within another 5 seconds it will deactivate the cruise control. At least it doesn't have the eye-tracking camera that requires you to be looking ahead at all times the system is engaged.

[roger wiegand]

"Autopilot" in Tesla-speak is adaptive cruise control and fairly useless lane keeping (you can have cruise without the lane keeping). The lane keeping nags you after about 20 seconds if you haven't wiggled the steering wheel. "Full self driving" (which is nothing like full self driving) is the prototype autonomous system. Apparently works quite well on the highway, more exciting on city streets. It also nags you (and then turns off) if you're not giving the car evidence of paying attention.

[Doug Garson]

In many states people can die if they break down along the road and their are laws to punish motorists who pass cars stopped along the road with out stopping and offering assistance. I ran into that in North Dakota. I passed a guy changing a tire on a two lane highway and was pulled over and given a warning. The Dept of Transportation had a lot of service announcements about carrying winter survival kits in cars, duty to stop and offer assistance. etc.

That sounds like a law that could put the driver stopping at risk, would you want an elderly couple or a mother with small children stopping to help some strangers late at night on a remote road? Better if police set up a 911 style number to report a driver in distress so they could respond, than to have people put themselves at risk by stopping. Besides, if your not mechanically inclined or have first aid training, the best thing you can do is call for qualified help.

[Bob Turkovich]

I have never been enamored with Tesla's tendency to let the customer base perform testing for them. Apparently, NHTSA still has some issues with their self-driving features.

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-rec...17e968d7b856ae

One would think the rental companies would ask for the features to be disabled to avoid legal issues.

[Brian Elfert]

Doesn't self driving cost additional on a Tesla? Hertz would be unlikely to want to spend extra money to add a feature that is full of liability issues.

[Alan Lightstone]

The Hertz rental does not have the level of "Full Self Driving" beta software that my car has. And yes, it costs extra when you buy the car, then, at least when I got it, had to qualify by demonstrating safe driving for a period of time, with no forced takeovers by the car, or moves it felt were dangerous.

I easily achieved that, as my car was in the shop for several days getting ceramic coating and tinting, so no bad driving while it never moved. Pretty funny at the time.

The best way I describe "Full Self Driving" in its present state to friends is "Absolutely Terrifying".

It has driven me 20-30 miles over residential streets, highways, etc... to a destination I plugged into the Nav system. Actually very impressive. But pigs will fly before I allow it to make a blind left-hand turn onto a busy divided highway/street. That part scares the &*(^ out of you.

It also wants to change lanes frequently, thinking it will save you time, even though you know there's always a backup of cars at a Starbucks, for example near me. I would never go into the right lane there, but the car thinks its a good move. And, despite supposedly being able to do so, the car won't let me turn lane changes off. So no question, it's not ready for primetime.