A work colleague had a 2015 Autobiography for a while and was always complaining that the adaptive cruise control would start braking far too early and slow down way too much. As this is my current swear word inducing issue with my Tesla I'm nervous about considering an L405 rather than sticking to my L322.

Is the adaptive cruise control as much of a pain as he said it was as I'm seriously thinking of dumping the Tesla purely for that reason?

One can set the distance by reference to which the CC adapts to a vehicle in front, mine is on the middle setting and I don't find it brakes too early. If you have a test drive you could try the different distance settings, easy to adjust by button on wheel. I don't think one can adjust the 'feel' of the reaction as e.g. on BMW where one can have 'comfort' or 'dynamic'.

There are pros and cons compared with standard CC. On A roads with lots of oncoming traffic where one could not overtake anyway it allows one just to hold station without being on and off the throttle all the time. Likewise on congested motorways. Where it is less useful is where the vehicle in front is turning off or stopping in a lay-by as the ACC can "think" that is the direction/speed of travel and brake (sometimes quite hard) when a driver controlling the throttle would steer past and maybe increase speed. Once one knows when this is apt to happen one can override the system and accelerate. There is also potential for being irritated if it is possible to overtake but the car slows down behind the slower vehicle in front and one has to pick up the speed more than one would otherwise need to do, but again with experience one can anticipate that and override by acceleration.

The 'adaptive' element stops working if the radar sensor is obscured e.g. by snow, one gets a warning on the screen but the car seems to operate as normal CC then, so it might be possible to eliminate the adapting by covering the radar sensor. I have not felt the need to try that, and Q whether there might be unintended problems in doing so.

The small disadvantages of ACC would certainly not put me off moving from a 322 to a 405 if that otherwise makes sense. Only Range Rovers since 1988

Good to know. Thanks for the comprehensive reply.

Last edited by Mike Edwards on 31st Mar 2022 5:47pm. Edited 1 time in total

I don't know when it was introduced, but at least with later L405s ACC can can be changed to CC by (IIRC) holding the decrease distance button for a longer than normal period for changing the distance (actually, time to vehicle in front) setting.

This has been a bugbear of mine since I first encountered ACC on the 2012 5.0SC. Awful (I argue frequently dangerous) for all the reasons stated plus more and couldn't be switched off. The joy of it on the L405 is that you can switch it off as Graeme described. But also use it on those infrequent occasions when adaptive is better as CS said. I find minimum distance is better as its more obvious when it starts to slow down and you're thus prompted more quickly to get back involved - or hopefully anticipating properly as CS describes! The other thing...when the radar failed intermittently on mine I couldn't switch on cruise at all. Before it was fixed (with a replacement unit) I found that if I could get it into cruise before the radar failure was reported then I could switch off adaptive and continue to use std CC even after the radar failure msg. But if I failed to engage cruise and switch off adaptive before the failed radar message then I couldn't use any sort of CC it simply wouldn't engage. Mike - MPx

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