Comma 3X: Initial Impressions

Summary

About a week ago I bought a Comma 3X from comma.ai, based on seeing a bunch of quite glowing reviews of it (and other FSD systems) from a number of car and tech reviewers I trust. In particular, since Kate of Transport Evolved has one and also has the exact same car as mine (2019 Kia Niro EV EX Premium in Galaxy Blue) and speaks highly of it, I decided that this might be a useful thing for handling my ongoing driving anxiety and vertigo issues.Luckily enough it happened to be during a flash sale, where they included the harness for free ($99 off from usual), so my total cost was $999 (shipping was included and there was no sales tax either).It arrived last Wednesday, and I installed and calibrated it soon after. I didn’t really get a chance to try it out until Sunday, but so far I’m very impressed with it. The Comma 3X works by installing as a bypass for the lanekeeping assistance camera. It also monitors the CAN bus in order to get additional signals such as turn signal state, blind spot monitoring, and a few other things from the car. As such it does require a car with an existing lane-keeping assistance system (which, you may recall, is the main reason I even upgraded to an EV to begin with, as my Mazda 3 didn’t have this feature), and the steering limits are subject to what the lanekeeping is capable of.Thankfully, the Kia Niro’s lanekeeping is capable of doing a lot!Installing it wasn’t too bad. I removed the wiring harness for my dashcam (which I don’t need anymore since the Comma replaces that) and installed the Comma’s hardness and OBD power connector thing. Routing the wire for the OBD power connector was a bit annoying and at some point I’ll want to redo it to make sure it isn’t interfering with my curtain airbag. There’s also a bit of cable management that I could have done better. The hardest part was figuring out where to stuff the harness behind the rear mirror trim piece; I eventually got everything back in place, but it was a challenge.On my first bo...