I wonder if we’ll see a “This is my E450 wagon and I’m selling it…” video in 2.5 years. I traded my 2021 GLE450 because it had a ton of issues over the 1.5 year that I owned it, to the point where my wife kept thinking I was making it up so I could get a defender.

 

Every luxury small volume make has supply issues still. It’s not just LR, though I’m guessing they are worse than most. I waited months for a headlight. Months for a windshield too. But it’s been flawless otherwise for 35K, so whatever. Neither stopped me driving since the headlight still works. And now poerfuluk has some light parts. My wife thinks it’s too big too, but also says it’s the most comfortable long distance car we’ve ever had. I bet he’ll regret selling it.

 

Slightly OT here, but just in case anyone else wants to watch the vid but does not have the time and patience to watch Doug eeee-nun-seeeee-aaate every vowel (and consonant!), the vid can be watched at 1.8x regular speed without making it difficult to understand what he's saying (generally I find that 1.5x is the limit where understanding what is being said becomes difficult). I use a YT enhancer add-on for Firefox that allows me to toggle the speed quickly.

 

Am I the only person who absolutely despises driver aids? I absolute loath the lane centering/lane keep assist. It says off most of the time, but occasionally turns itself back on and I only find out when the car abruptly tries to prevent me from changing lanes.

I want to be in complete control of the vehicle myself at all times. I don't want a computer butting in and thinking it knows my will better than I do. I've driven cross country from LA to NE PA or DC area 8 times and I've never even used cruise control.

 

The GLE450 I owned was tech-heavy: could accelerate and slow down on its own, had a center of lane assist, could read speed signs and adjust accordingly, ultra quiet, dual 12” screens, etc but every now and then the gremlins would come out.

This one time the cable that feeds the antenna info to the main computer got cut by the front seat (it wasn’t assembled right from the factory) so all of a sudden the map wasn’t working properly. This would cause the positioning of the gps to be about 5-6 miles off course and it wasn’t a big deal because I was using Waze via CarPlay. I was flying at 80mph in one of Austin’s toll roads when it suddenly decelerated on its own to about 40 mph. Thankfully no one was behind me so I stepped on the gas to override the automatic cruise control speed and I couldn’t figure out what happened. Turns out the gps had positioned itself on a rural road that had a 40 mph limit and the car read that speed limit from the map and tried to auto correct itself. That’s when I realized maybe I shouldn’t trust technology in my car that much.

 

But what could possibly go wrong?

 

All of this is exactly true for me. My wife loves the 110 more than any car either of us has ever owned, AND won't drive it because it's too big. Not that I would be inviting her to drive it, but she doesn't want one, and she doesn't think the smaller LRs are anything to write home about. So she sticks with little Benz SUVs. But I had the 3-month wait for a windshield fall of 2021, and other than that my 2022 truck has been flawless, albeit for only 24,000 miles in my case.

 

No, you are not the only person who despises driver aids. I enjoy driving a well engineered vehicle, and I love the feeling of being connected to a balanced, but powerful vehicle like the Defender. I don’t want a car or truck thinking for me and making decisions for me. My standard routine after pressing the ignition start button is to hit SETTINGS, then VEHICLE, then DRIVER ASSISTANCE, then, COLLISION AVOIDANCE, and proceed to turn off EMERGENCY BRAKING, and EMERGENCY LANE KEEPING. Then I turn off AUTO STOP/START. And like you, I never use cruise control.

 

Bad ones? absolutely, and most of them are bad.

I will say the only thing I loved about my Tesla was the lane keeping/center tech. Not FSD but their basic 'autopilot'.I never drove hands off but on 12 hour days I was much less tired when I got there and it was pretty solid. My only complaint was they charged like $6k to get it to not shut off when you lange changed.

The LR tech in the defender is not great. I've been bounced around/steering wheel yanked out of hand with the lane stuff and it's off permanently, with the ACC Ii've butt clenched the seat a couple times with its very short distance adaptive cruise, coming up at highway speed on a line of stopped traffic on a curve seems to be its big weakness. Tesla was a bit better but still butt clenched a few times, but it was better at recovering. This morning the defender triggered the forward collision alerts with ACC on and at 'max distance' between cars which surprised me and I stood on the brake and left it off rest of the morning commute.

 

l turned off the Lane Assist after it nearly pushed me into a line of parked vehicles because l had to cross the centre line to get past them, and there was a car coming the other way (plenty of room, it was a wide road)

Since then the Lane Assist has never intervened, and l've driven the same road a few times.