The two are VERY different. Lane keep assist with adaptive cruise will nudge you if you get to close to a line while you drive. With Pilot Assist you are not "driving", but rathe the car is. It steers on its own without input from you. For example, Lane Keep Assist is not really "working" with Pilot Assist, because the car is constantly keeping the car in the center of the lane at all times (after all, the car is driving, and it doesn't need a nudge to grab your attention like you do if you get too close to a line). Auto Pilot continues to steer the car if you take your hands off the wheel momentarily...it's driving on its own. Auto Pilot will actually follow other cars at slow speeds in a traffic jam, turning the steering wheel to go around a curve with no input from you. Auto Pilot also is aware of it's surroundings, meaning it changes speed and following distances if it senses other cars around it that could potentially "box you in", proactively keeping it's distance from a car since you can not change lanes to potentially avoid it should it slam on it's brakes.

Adaptive cruise is cruise that maintains a distance. You are driving, it's helping you maintain your speed or a safe distance behind a slower car. Auto Pilot is driving the car for you, you are just there to babysit the system and take over in situations that are too complex for the car to understand or when road markings are so poor the car can not determin where the lane is. They really are completely different things. I drive with Auto Pilot on 95% of the time, it's one of the best systems on the market and often times is considered to many things better than a Tesla can do. It takes some time to understand how it reacts, but after a little time it's about the most relaxing drive feature ever created.

 

I concur with the Farmer Dude.

It DOES take a little while to get used to AutoPilot, and it does not steer the car perfectly, but once you learn its limitations and learn to trust it, you will use it.

In fact, I find that if I'm on a long interstate road trip and have been using AutoPilot extensively, I get mildly freaked out when I first disable it. I'm like "Whoa... I gotta steer this boat now and I'm not entirely comfortable with that"

 

Pilot assist is awesome. I rarely use cruise on a car without it, including adaptive cruise. And I wouldn't buy a new Volvo without it either as it's the only part of the high tech stuff I enjoy. But what you're describing is all it does. It keeps you in your lane on a set track. It's supposed to have pressure on the steering 100% of the time. It's not a matter of being too aggressive, it's keeping the car where it thinks it should be. Makes for an ultra relaxing trip. Generally women like it less than men... read into that all you want.

 

Totally agree! With the use of pilot assist, versus cruise control in my Lexus, the difference is reduced driver fatigue from my periodic 5+ hour trips to New England is like night-and-day. With my V90, I don't arrive at my destination tired. With my Lexus, I could hardly wait to reach my son's home and stretch out on the recliner. No joke. LOL!

 

AutoPilot won't change lanes for you, correct? I think the Tesla system will.

 

We have a 2018 XC60 T6 CPO, purchased in 2020, and which we have really loved so far. I really like the adaptive cruise control and use it often. Not so much the Pilot Assist. As far as I can tell, the only noticeable difference between the two functions is that the Pilot Assist seems more aggressive in keeping the car in the lane. To me and especially my wife it is almost too aggressive.
Are there other differences between the two modes, and does anyone have other opinions?

ACC has nothing to do with steering, that must be LKA you are sensing.
Try turning off LKA (Lane Keep Assist) or whatever it is called, then use ACC with 100% you steering, and PA when you want steering assist/monitoring. Much more pleasant experience in my opinion. Like others have said, PA is awesome, especially when you have older Sensus based cars and can use the steering wheel buttons to switch between modes on the fly.

 

older Sensus based cars and can use the steering wheel buttons to switch between modes on the fly.

They took that away?! Oh, no! It is a great feature.

 

Pilot assist is awesome on highways, last time I made 600km just on pilot assist. Super smooth and u just sit and keep the wheel. Pilot assist is also nice in traffic jam.

 

Would be much better, if the car moved on it's own after a full stop though

 

Mine doesn't. After the car infront pulls away all i get is a message ("ready to drive"). I have to tap the gas pedal to get moving.

 

after a couple of seconds when you have stopped, you see the yellow icon turn grey, you will indeed have to hit the gas padel, OR much easier: press the plus/resume button on the left of the steering wheel.

 

It will after a full stop fi it was less than 3 seconds. Otherwise all you have to do is tap the accelerator. It's not as fast as I would accelerate, but it's faster than your avg Toyota driver. And you can always accelerate more without deactivating the cruise. I use it in the morning to follow my daughters school bus... lots of stops.

 

And the acceleration rate/response is tied to the "Follow Distance" I play with that a lot as well. (Hopefully THOSE buttons work on AAOS?)
As I approach traffic or traffic is slowing down, I make sure it is on the max of 5, so it reacts quicker. Then once stopped or creeping along, I set it to 1, closest, which still is far enough away at low speeds for people to want to edge in on you.
Open road I run it at 5 unless there is traffic, and the slow response to acceleration might annoy someone behind me, then I will kick it to 3 (or turn it off).
I found that combining that, and driving/playing to get best economy, basically being more concerned with gradual braking to assure regenerative braking as much as possible, my wife complains about my driving a lot less (basically never). Another win.
Now her only gripe is when I unleash all 400 horses for a merge/pass action.

 

To each his own, but I do not care for Pilot Assist and have used it only a handful of times in the 4 years I've been driving SPA XC60s.

 

I will never consider another car without it. I'm always baffled buy folks that don't use it. I've never met, in person, someone that has it and doesn't swear by it. I literally drove halfway across the country just to get a car with it becasue there wasn't something local. This is, to me, the most significant change in car safety in history, and I've never bee more relaxed after a 1000 mile day than with AP. It's brilliant in stop and go traffic. Sometimes I think folks that don't like it haven't really had it explained or experienced it first hand. My parents are just in awe of the system.

 

I would always choose Pilot Assiste since I drive a lot on freeways. In fact need to brush who offers Pilot Assist and BEV in Manila for my next car. Pilot Assist is practical if you drive on the freeway frequently.

 

Thanks to all for your valuable comments.

 

How do you reset the centering?

The curves are pretty tight, but not like a mountain switchback. I assume I just set the speed too high and maybe it would work fine 20 mph slower I can try again

 

If you feel like it's hugging one line or not centered in the road, much of the time you can force the system to "reset" the centering in the lane. Hug the center line and Lane Keep Assist will try to steering you back. Don't let it. Just resist the car's steering and after a few seconds the car kicks off auto pilot and you are in full control. Center the car in the lane and then reengage auto pilot. The forces the system to recalculate where center is in the lane, and most of the time it stops hugging a line. Is the system perfect? No, but it is competent enough to trust. Once you learn the scenarios it struggles with grab the wheel and drive for a few seconds until that confusion passes and then let it go back and do it's thing. I set the cruise 60 and auto pilot will take me around just about any curve that doesn't have a sign recommending reducing your speed before entering the curve. Out of the thousands of curves I've driven only a handful of times did the system deactivate for some reason (usually at night). I just have my hand on the wheel in a curve in case the system needs some guidance. It's not self driving after all....

 

I mean, lane keeping would engage then too. I genuinely think it's more in your head and trusting the system than a defect with the car. I've driven multiple cars hours with it and yeah it sometimes turns off, but never once has it flung me off the road. Heck, for highway driving in cars without it I hardly use more than a finger to guide the wheel.

 

You are right. People won’t trust it. But they should. One time the system errors and they are not paying attention and nearly crash and then it’s the cars fault and it’s so terrible it can’t be used. I think this is what happens to a lot of owners that dislike the system. People say it can’t do curves, but I drive all sorts of curvy roads and I can drive for months before it kicks off during one. It’s fantastic at curves.

 

Since Volvo's Pilot Assist is not a Level 5 autonomy (none exist thus far), the best way I'd like to think of it is that I'm still driving, but it makes long curves straighter. That reduces the constant muscle exertion needed following long curves in freeways, making long drives less tiring.

 

So the car knows its off centre and accepts a driver's contrived and counterintuitive series of inputs to correct it? And if its not off center it knows this and doesn't accept the secret code? Maybe, seeing as it seems to already know whether or not it is centred in the lane, it should just correct itself without any external inputs?

 

The car does not know it’s off center….it gets confused by the road edge (like gravel or grass). So it can hug a line very tightly. This procedure resets that. This is something happens a few times a year for most people. Your assessment is not at all based on my example. Most of the time the system works like a dream, even in curves.