ALK > ALK + LKA

[eisenb11]

Just added Active Lane Keep to my car because I was missing autopilot from my Tesla. At first, I had that on with Lane Keep Assist on. What a disaster - car was kind of steering while also kind of bouncing between lane markers. It was unnerving. Then I hit a turn, the car beeped and then sailed into the next lane. This was on the highway (91 in CA). Not impressed.

So then I tried using ALK with LKA turned off. Now it’s trying to stay centered with a little bit of occasional bounce. I had it set to 75 and it was able to hold the lane. No more lane escapes. Much better!

Verse autopilot, I would say that autopilot is a little better as it has less lane bouncing but overall ALK is acceptable. This is only my first time using it so we’ll see how it handles different situations as I continue to use it.

One thing I like more about ALK - if I take over to change lanes without disengaging it, it’ll turn off during the lane change then turn itself back on once I’m centered in the next lane. I really like that. With autopilot, you’d have to engage it again which gets a little annoying.

Another thing is that autopilot is very sluggish to speed up. ACC/ALK handles traffic changing speeds much more gracefully (and aggressively) which I prefer. I felt autopilot is way too slow to accelerate which in LA traffic invites people to constantly cut in front of you.

Some TBDs is that autopilot completely freaks out when my lane is going fast but the lane next to me is slow and when there is a semi truck next to me. I haven’t had a chance to experience how ALK handles these situations yet.

Anyway, just sharing my experience. Highly recommend turning LKA off if you have ALK. Actually, I’d recommend always turning LKA off as I find the feature highly annoying in general.

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[ShiftyWolf]

I only have LKA and the first thing I did after purchase was deactivate it. On my previous Audi I only used it for long highway drives.

Remember that LKA isn't automated steering and has only limited ability to correct your line if you drift too far toward the edge.

 

[eisenb11]

Remember that LKA isn't automated steering and has only limited ability to correct your line if you drift too far toward the edge.

Correct, that's why I purchased ALK. What really surprised me though was that ALK, with LKA enabled, was terrible when being used *together*. You'd think they'd enhance each other, but that wasn't the case.

Simply disabling LKA and running ALK by itself was much better.

 

[ShiftyWolf]

Oh, gotcha. Probably two similar but different systems fighting with each other.

 

[The Riddler]

I‘m currently in an Audi A6 (don’t ask, pothole post following at some point) which has LKA… I cannot work out how to turn it off and on quiet country lanes it seems to misread the lack of any white lInes and randomly throws the odd ‘correction’ into the driving experience… feels downright nasty, frankly…

 

[ShiftyWolf]

I‘m currently in an Audi A6 (don’t ask, pothole post following at some point) which has LKA… I cannot work out how to turn it off

In the Audi, isn't it just the button on the end of the turn signal stalk?

 

[pedroleumjelly]

huh I just tried ALK with LKA off and it maintains the center-lane position better. Definitely less zigzagging.

 

[Jonathan S.]

In the Audi, isn't it just the button on the end of the turn signal stalk?

It is on my 2022 A6 Allroad. And works fine on interstates. Otherwise I keep it off.

Same protocol with my Taycan. Although I’ve never tried the more advanced version without the more basic version. Especially since I never knew that was possible. Should be a fun experiment!

 

[eisenb11]

huh I just tried ALK with LKA off and it maintains the center-lane position better. Definitely less zigzagging.

Yep, it's much nicer that way! That's my currently preferred way of using ALK too.

 

[eisenb11]

Although I’ve never tried the more advanced version without the more basic version. Especially since I never knew that was possible. Should be a fun experiment!

Definitely, try it - it's much better! I found out I could turn it off by digging through the settings after LKA angrily beeped at me (with ALK on) and sent me into the next lane unexpectedly!

 

[The Riddler]

It is on my 2022 A6 Allroad. And works fine on interstates. Otherwise I keep it off.

Same protocol with my Taycan. Although I’ve never tried the more advanced version without the more basic version. Especially since I never knew that was possible. Should be a fun experiment!

I wil try that when I get in the car tonight, you might have saved me ending up in a hedge..!

 

[LXSC]

Just added Active Lane Keep to my car because I was missing autopilot from my Tesla. At first, I had that on with Lane Keep Assist on. What a disaster - car was kind of steering while also kind of bouncing between lane markers. It was unnerving. Then I hit a turn, the car beeped and then sailed into the next lane. This was on the highway (91 in CA). Not impressed.

So then I tried using ALK with LKA turned off. Now it’s trying to stay centered with a little bit of occasional bounce. I had it set to 75 and it was able to hold the lane. No more lane escapes. Much better!

Verse autopilot, I would say that autopilot is a little better as it has less lane bouncing but overall ALK is acceptable. This is only my first time using it so we’ll see how it handles different situations as I continue to use it.

One thing I like more about ALK - if I take over to change lanes without disengaging it, it’ll turn off during the lane change then turn itself back on once I’m centered in the next lane. I really like that. With autopilot, you’d have to engage it again which gets a little annoying.
Another thing is that autopilot is very sluggish to speed up. ACC/ALK handles traffic changing speeds much more gracefully (and aggressively) which I prefer. I felt autopilot is way too slow to accelerate which in LA traffic invites people to constantly cut in front of you.
Some TBDs is that autopilot completely freaks out when my lane is going fast but the lane next to me is slow and when there is a semi truck next to me. I haven’t had a chance to experience how ALK handles these situations yet.
Anyway, just sharing my experience. Highly recommend turning LKA off if you have ALK. Actually, I’d recommend always turning LKA off as I find the feature highly annoying in general.

My wife has the model S with Ludicurious + and FSD (full self drive) Very fast - 0 to 60
when it comes to autonomous driving Tesla is the best.
I also have the Porsche Taycan, which is all we autonomous functions enabled, . Including Innovo drive, It is definitely not the same as the Tesla. It is rather primitive.
Of course the Porsche drive cannot be compared with the Tesla.
It's really a Silicon Valley car! With all the great technologies.

Porsche is a great German car. But there software is way behind Tesla I think it's about seven years behind.

I paid $6K for the full self drive. I had to wait for four years prior to be enabled, Now it costs $16K

I think my son's BMW I seven has gotten better autonomous driving features compared with the Taycan.

I only have LKA and the first thing I did after purchase was deactivate it. On my previous Audi I only used it for long highway drives.

Remember that LKA isn't automated steering and has only limited ability to correct your line if you drift too far toward the edge.

 

[eisenb11]

My wife has the model S with Ludicurious + and FSD (full self drive) Very fast - 0 to 60
when it comes to autonomous driving Tesla is the best.
I also have the Porsche Taycan, which is all we autonomous functions enabled, . Including Innovo drive, It is definitely not the same as the Tesla. It is rather primitive.
Of course the Porsche drive cannot be compared with the Tesla.
It's really a Silicon Valley car! With all the great technologies.

That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm comparing ALK to Tesla Autopilot.

ALK is not meant to compete with Tesla FSD.

Nice you got FSD for $6k, but the price has gone up a ton since then - at the current price of $16k it's yet to deliver on the driving experience (or robo-taxis) that they promised were a year or two away 10 years ago.

 

[eisenb11]

Revising my review after playing with ALK more... I'm going to downgrade it from "good" to "ok-ish".

Drove 40 miles to my parents place this afternoon and ALK did pretty good. Drove 40 miles back during sunset and it did really bad. To be fair, the sunlight was illuminating the road in a way that I could barely see the lane markers. Apparently ALK could barely see them too. It also doesn't help that Cali seems to spend money on everything but their roads so the lane markers were pretty light in many areas (Highway 91).

What I really hate, though, is that ALK silently turns itself off! This is dangerous as heck! You're just driving around with ALK on, it's doing its thing... you start drifting towards the edge of the lane but assume ALK is still doing its thing (it is) then suddenly it turns off without warning and you're heading out of the lane. The thing should at least beep or something.

So revisiting the topic - Tesla Autopilot is way better than ALK. I've done that drive at that time at least 60 times with Autopilot without issue. I've even used Autopilot in the rain when it was coming down so hard that I could barely see and surprisingly the thing worked.

So I guess Porsche meant it when they labelled this a driver assist system - you really do need to be ready to take over at a moment's notice - except I never got any notice in the dozens of times that it turned off on the way home.

Hope this improves over time through over-the-air updates...

 

[whitex]

I paid $6K for the full self drive. I had to wait for four years prior to be enabled, Now it costs $16K

And yet it's still a Level 2 system (originally advertised as Level 5 - with Elon's famous example of summon from New York City to Los Angeles). You could have saved money by buying just the AutoPilot, not FSD. I learned to never buy future Tesla products after Tesla failed to deliver OTA update for my 2015 S P85D which was supposed to unleash the full 691hp - Tesla only later admitted after being sued that the most the P85D battery would allow was 463hp. They offered to increase it to ~500hp for $5,000. I bought 2 more Model S'es after that (4 total), but never again paid for any feature or spec to be delivered in the future via OTA. If it doesn't work on delivery day, I'm not paying for it - saved myself some money on that front. When buying my next Model S in 2016, Tesla tried hard to sell me FSD. I told them I'd only agree if they put it in writing that they will extend my bumper-to-bumper warranty until 6 months after FSD is fully functional as advertised (at that time, so Level 5 autonomy), so that I can enjoy it under warranty for 6 months - of course they refused, so I didn't buy it. The automatic headlights wasn't even functional until 9 months later (the very first function of FSD computer). The car was totaled a year later. Sufficed to say I didn't buy FSD on the next one either, sold it last year, FSD still not even Level 3.

AFAIK, the only car legal in US with Level 3 autonomy is Mercedes.

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