First long (10+ hours) drive in my Telluride and was looking on feedback on HDA setting on how users like (or didn't) like then

[PittPa]

I've had starting using these features on my sons 2019 Mazda CX5 and my wifes 2019 Q5 Premium. I found my wifes setting were not as likable as my sons. For example the cruise control distance setting would constantly slow you down too far behind a slower vehicle and you realize you have been following a truck for 2 miles going 50mph, I've heard is great on the KIA, what do others think?

 

[qwikhit]

Agreed; I think the Telly does slow you down too far behind a slower vehicle while in cruise. Just something you have to get used to; they probably err on the side of caution when determining distance. Night time, bad weather, slippery roads all probably played into the determination.

 

[psyduckio]

Tried it out on some busy highways and it wasn't too bad! I was having some anxiety "letting go" and trusting the HDA (this is my first car that has this feature) but it worked great. It is pretty conservative / cautious but I really don't mind it. I actually like it to go a bit slower sometimes. There is a setting to follow closer if you like, but I like having the space to brake in case there's a need for human intervention

 

[qwikhit]

I didn’t realize you could change the distance; where is this setting?

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[qwikhit]

Well I broke open the owners manual and noticed you can adjust vehicle distance under the SCC (Smart Cruise Control). I don’t have HDA on my 21 S so basically I researched and answered my own question

 

[PittPa]

I guess I should specify that my first trip is upcoming, I haven't actually done it yet, just with trips with the other cars mentioned. I am a kind of jump in and figure it out type of guy with things like this and sometimes too many items to to manage (while driving) actually makes the car driving more distracted. It's like a need a tech friendly co driver (not my wife!) to work out the optimal settings rather than me hunting through menu's and settings at 75mph. At least for the first 10-20 miles.

 

[BasilFawlty]

My minor issue with the Forward Collision Avoidance Assist is not so much how soon it comes on, but rather how, in some cases, there is a delay in the car accelerating once a car in front has turned. Sometimes, if a car in front slows to turn into a parking lot, etc., I feel like people behind me are probably wondering why I'm taking so long to accelerate once the car that was in front is out of the way.

 

[Tellthemride]

I don’t have HDA on my 21 S so basically I researched and answered my own question

Only advantages of HDA over SCC as a stand-alone you are missing are:

1. Car can resume from a complete stop without driver input. For example, stop and go rush hour traffic.
2. Ability to go longer distances without physically holding the steering wheel before the warning chimes. (Based on my observations.)
3. Car will automatically adjusts the cruising speed to posted speed limits. Including as the limits change faster/slower across different sections of highways.

The prerequisite is that you need to be driving on a HDA supported highway, determined by the preloaded maps in UVO navigation (hence EX and SX trim feature only). I feel the speed limit one is hardly used as regular traffic always moves above speed limit in my area.

It's like a need a tech friendly co driver (not my wife!) to work out the optimal settings rather than me hunting through menu's and settings at 75mph. At least for the first 10-20 miles.

If you don’t want to read the entire manual, the features booklet does a pretty good job highlighting the main ones for SCC.

2021 Telluride Features and Functions Guide

My minor issue with the Forward Collision Avoidance Assist is not so much how soon it comes on, but rather how, in some cases, there is a delay in the car accelerating once a car in front has turned. Sometimes, if a car in front slows to turn into a parking lot, etc., I feel like people behind me are probably wondering why I'm taking so long to accelerate once the car that was in front is out of the way.

You can adjust SCC reaction time to fast in the cluster menus, which might make a small difference. But yes, it will still delay accelerating compared to normal drivers especially if used in the city.

The Telluride’s SCC/HDA system in my opinion is ideally suited for driving on mainly straight stretches of highway at a constant speed with very few cars around, and avoiding traveling in the outside lanes that are adjacent to off ramps.

Once you start introducing the variable of other cars, you will quickly start to realize the SCC/HDA system’s limitations.

1. Slows down a lot earlier than you normally would if intending to pass another vehicle in the same lane (ie. leading vehicle at off ramp) or if intending to switching lanes. This would look unusual to drivers around and behind you, and in some cases the braking is very abrupt.
2. Speeds up a lot slower than you normally would from a complete stop. Even with SCC reaction time set at fastest setting on cluster menus. Tends to like having a sizable gap with the leading car first, which is usually least desirable in city driving (ie. prepared to be honked at).
3. Speeds up a lot faster than you normally would after the leading car switches lanes or gets off an exit. The SCC/HDA can only anticipate traffic conditions as far as the radar and cameras can detect. So if you can see standstill traffic a quarter mile out, but your Telluride cannot, the SCC/HDA is going to floor the throttle to get you back up to set cruising speed. This would look unusual to drivers around you as normal drivers wouldn’t typically do this if anticipating stopped traffic ahead.
4. This leads to the next limitation of SCC/HDA, the system can not anticipate stop lights/signs. Sometimes highways or GPS routing will bring you to to a state route/road which will still have travel speeds up to 60 mph, but can have stop lights. You need to make sure you either turn off SCC in these areas or pay particular attention at the stop lights. Especially for city driving, where I wouldn’t recommend using SCC at all due to this limitation.
5. Lane Follow Assist works great as part of the SCC/HDA systems keeping you centered in your lane. However, it is important to know it has limits as well. One being that it can randomly turn off at any given time. This could be any situation where the computer system determines operating conditions are not met. (ie. lanes are faded, degree of turn is too great, lanes undetected). Always keep your eye on that green steering wheel icon to see if your car is controlling the steering, especially at bends in the road.
6. If you drive in the outside lanes of a highway and the LFA can see the lane pattern for an off ramp, there can be scenarios where it will steer you into that direction. Has not happened to me so far, but I think other owners have reported this.

To sum up, the SCC/HDA system is one of the best in the market. It reacts well in most cases to leading cars merging into/out of your lane, the LFA doesn’t ping pong you in your lane (which I have experienced with Audi’s), and overall it can really make long highway road trips a lot more pleasant. Just need to remember that this car is by no means an autonomous self driving car, and to pay attention especially when not traveling on straightaways and around heavier traffic.

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[qwikhit]

#6 has happened to me; not all the off ramps but there are a few. Definitely gets your attention

 

[DarkMossJustin]

I haven't tried adaptive cruise control yet, but did deactivate as some of the "nanny" features.

Lane keep is a bit annoying. I tried it once, but to avoid hitting some overgrown trees that extended into the lane (city/county mismanagement and incompetence are rampant in CA), I swerved into the empty other lane and the steering wheel fought me. The human eye can see more than the car's sensors. Never again.

Rear cross traffic alert is extremely useful. Love that.

Blind spot mirror lights/alert sound are great.

Forward collision alert? Love it. I normally keep a lot of distance because myself and the next car up because I don't want flying rock chips hitting my new grill, hood, windshield, etc. but this helped me a few times when I was in heavier traffic.

HUD = amazing. I keep mine low and didn't use the colors. White shows up best.

 

[aperry]

I have a 2021 SXP with about 3k miles and I've been quite impressed with SCC and especially with LFA turned on. On the highway this is a game-changer for me and until recently it worked really really well. However, recently I've noticed some behavior that leaves me with some questions about LFA. Maybe someone here knows the answer!

I live in the northeast (MA) and we get snow now and then. The vehicle gets dirty. I've noticed that LFA becomes pretty "unstable" at times, particularly after cleaning snow from it. So here's the scenario that has happened to me twice in the last two weeks:
Light snowfall overnight. In the morning I use autostart to warm it up while I'm clearing it and loading stuff (ski gear) into it, and then start driving. I get to the highway, the road and lanes are very clear (no snow in this area), there's no traffic and I turn on SCC with LFA. The steering wheel icon turns green, it starts automatically centering in the lane, but it's not as smooth as normal. It's ping-ponging back and fourth, and occasionally trying to steer me into another lane (or off the road!). The system seemed to be having trouble identifying the lane and would also disengage are unexpected times. So I pull over and verify the windshield is clear (where the camera is), and then clean off the other cameras (which shouldn't be necessary?), but the behavior persists. On the second drive it eventually returned to normal. On the first drive I abandoned LFA after the behavior persisted, so I'm not sure if it would have returned to normal.

By the way, I always keep LKA off (which isn't very useful to me).

So I have two questions:
1) Does LFA use more sensors/cameras than just the windshield cam? The manual seems to indicate that it only uses the windshield camera.
2) Is it possible that if the windshield is blocked/dirty when the car is started then the software gets messed up for the whole ride (or for some time even after the windshield is cleared)? Maybe there's a calibration that is performed on each startup and at certain intervals, or something like that?

Thanks!

 

[Tellthemride]

The system seemed to be having trouble identifying the lane and would also disengage are unexpected times.

This is normal behavior even when there hasn’t been any snowfall, or when the roads are clear and the car cameras are perfectly clean. This is why I always am emphasizing that owners should not let the car steer itself at all times without paying attention. It will turn off whenever it wants with absolutely no warning. It doesn’t happen often enough to the point of making LFA useless, but it only takes a second for you to go crashing into a ditch at highway speeds.

The LFA system should only be relying on on that camera on the windshield behind the backup mirror. There are other environmental factors that would affect the performance though. Even if the windshield is clear. (ie salt on the road, dried up melted salt making a white haze on the lines, the sunlight shining off of the snowbanks on the sides or wet pavement making it hard for the camera to detect lanes.)

I wan’t to believe that snow blocking the windshield on startup should have no impact on performance later when driving, but I haven’t started up enough times with a snow covered car to say based on experience.

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[aperry]

This is normal behavior even when there hasn’t been any snowfall, or when the roads are clear and the car cameras are perfectly clean. This is why I always am emphasizing that owners should not let the car steer itself at all times without paying attention. It will turn off whenever it wants with absolutely no warning. It doesn’t happen often enough to the point of making LFA useless, but it only takes a second for you to go crashing into a ditch at highway speeds.

The LFA system should only be relying on on that camera on the windshield behind the backup mirror. There are other environmental factors that would affect the performance though. Even if the windshield is clear. (ie salt on the road, dried up melted salt making a white haze on the lines, the sunlight shining off of the snowbanks on the sides or wet pavement making it hard for the camera to detect lanes.)

I wan’t to believe that snow blocking the windshield on startup should have no impact on performance later when driving, but I haven’t started up enough times with a snow covered car to say based on experience.

I agree that it's fairly normal for the system to disengage LFA whenever it wants, and of course I don't entirely rely on it and stop focusing on the road. But over hundreds of miles on LFA I had developed a pretty good feel for it and a good level of confidence. The behavior I noticed on these two drives was significantly different. To your point about things like sunlight reflecting off snowbanks, I'm wondering about this too. I did notice that for long stretches of road there was a short snowbank accumulated at the base of the highway guardrail which could easily look like a white lane marker to a computer. That would explain why every now and then it seemed to pull me in that direction.

Anyway, thanks. I'll try to test this out some more and report back if/when I learn anything. It's tricky, given how complicated (and opaque) the system is.

 

[PittPa]

Just finished 20 plus hours, 1500 miles in the Telly. Overall, great highway driver. The suspension is very comfortable, a little softer than what I have been used to. Makes passenger comfort a plus, high speed turns 80-85 can seem a little loose, not firmly planted at first but you get the hang and your comfort level increases. Brakes are more then good enough. Noise level superb, can listen to audio spoken word or music at comfortable level. View is great from drivers position. I am really pleased and this was one of the biggest concerns I had about a larger SUV. Barely any road noise, vibration to speak of. Tire pressures were at 35,

 

[Batman3365]

Any recommendations for preventing bug splat on those long drives ?

 

[PittPa]

Any recommendations for preventing bug splat on those long drives ?

Drive around the northeast. No bugs until the spring!

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[Batman3365]

Drive around the northeast. No bugs until the spring!

Ah good point. Planning on driving from Texas to Missouri in March. Should still be cold so may luck out.

 

[Husker Soze]

My minor issue with the Forward Collision Avoidance Assist is not so much how soon it comes on, but rather how, in some cases, there is a delay in the car accelerating once a car in front has turned. Sometimes, if a car in front slows to turn into a parking lot, etc., I feel like people behind me are probably wondering why I'm taking so long to accelerate once the car that was in front is out of the way.

Then the issue you have is with the SCC and not the FCA.

The SCC uses the technology of the FCA and incorporates it to a suite of systems for this feature. Remember that FCA works without SCC activated (if enabled).

That being stated....yes, the delay on the acceleration can be improved.

 

[BasilFawlty]

Then the issue you have is with the SCC and not the FCA.

The SCC uses the technology of the FCA and incorporates it to a suite of systems for this feature. Remember that FCA works without SCC activated (if enabled).

That being stated....yes, the delay on the acceleration can be improved.

I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[blitt]

I guess I should specify that my first trip is upcoming, I haven't actually done it yet, just with trips with the other cars mentioned. I am a kind of jump in and figure it out type of guy with things like this and sometimes too many items to to manage (while driving) actually makes the car driving more distracted. It's like a need a tech friendly co driver (not my wife!) to work out the optimal settings rather than me hunting through menu's and settings at 75mph. At least for the first 10-20 miles.

For slightly over 1 yr now have been using the Adaptive Cruise with HDA on long runs and absolutely love!! It really does "know what it's doing" and I have become very grateful for a moment to clean my glasses, blow my nose, look out the side window, etc.!! It took me awhile to "get the faith" but I now have it .....the most important thing is to "know the limits" and go from there! I use it only on interstate style roads, never use it at night.