Photo: Fred Michaud via Twitter
Tesla uses OTA updates to improve car features, and FSD Beta is at the top of its priorities. Following a recent update, Tesla owners in the FSD Beta program noticed a marked improvement in how their Tesla tackles snowy roads.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk always spoke enthusiastically about the Full Self-Driving capabilities, although they are still far from being “better than a human,” as promised. A breakthrough is constantly announced to come “sometime next year,” but we’re several years behind that schedule. This doesn’t mean that the FSD doesn’t improve. It does, and everyone who tested it was impressed. It just means that its chances of being anything other than a beta piece of software remain slim.
No matter how much Tesla FSD improves, it will remain a work in progress. That’s because humans themselves never stop to learn driving, and one can encounter new situations all the time, no matter how experienced. This makes automated driving all the more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the software has improved tremendously over the past year, and Musk promised it would only get better with the release of the unified stack, aka FSD Beta V11.
Even with the V11 almost ready for wide rollout, Tesla continues to improve the V10 software, as visible in the videos shared on social media by the FSD beta testers. The FSD can now drive point A to point B with very few disengagements in various conditions. Nevertheless, driving in the snow has been a sore point in the past.
We saw a Tesla on FSD driving on a snowy road in January 2022 and were almost horrified by the result. The software version was 10.8 at the time, and it failed to notice the road boundaries under the snow, something a human driver does instinctively. Also, the fact that the road had piles of snow on the side made no difference. Certainly, FSD was unusable in the snow at the time.
Fast forward almost a year later, and the Holidays brought us new videos of driving in the snow. The Tesla FSD, then on V10.69.25, still behaved badly, although it could drive a tad more dependably. The car would still pick the wrong lane, lose track of its position, and often disabled itself. But it was a marked improvement that we have to admit to. You could think that Tesla FSD would never figure out how to drive properly in winter conditions, which might be a sad admission for customers in Canada and other northern regions.
However, things are not that bad because a bug-fix release visibly improved things. Fred Michaud tested the FSD 10.69.25.1 in the snow in Canada, and the videos he posted look encouraging. Far from perfect, but his Tesla Model 3 LR AWD could still navigate and find its way across snow-covered roads with very few hiccups. In the video below, the software took the wrong way initially, but corrected its mistake with a U-turn in the parking lot. A Stop sign overshoot might be its biggest mistake, which is still impressive.
Other videos on his page show how Tesla FSD tackles snow at night during a snowstorm, with equally impressive results. It can get stuck when it encounters deeper snow without disengaging, or it can give up in slippery conditions. In this regard, FSD is still far from being as good as a human driver because Fred gets out of these situations without a sweat. The AWD setup and, no doubt, good winter tires help.
No matter how much Tesla FSD improves, it will remain a work in progress. That’s because humans themselves never stop to learn driving, and one can encounter new situations all the time, no matter how experienced. This makes automated driving all the more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the software has improved tremendously over the past year, and Musk promised it would only get better with the release of the unified stack, aka FSD Beta V11.
Even with the V11 almost ready for wide rollout, Tesla continues to improve the V10 software, as visible in the videos shared on social media by the FSD beta testers. The FSD can now drive point A to point B with very few disengagements in various conditions. Nevertheless, driving in the snow has been a sore point in the past.
We saw a Tesla on FSD driving on a snowy road in January 2022 and were almost horrified by the result. The software version was 10.8 at the time, and it failed to notice the road boundaries under the snow, something a human driver does instinctively. Also, the fact that the road had piles of snow on the side made no difference. Certainly, FSD was unusable in the snow at the time.
Fast forward almost a year later, and the Holidays brought us new videos of driving in the snow. The Tesla FSD, then on V10.69.25, still behaved badly, although it could drive a tad more dependably. The car would still pick the wrong lane, lose track of its position, and often disabled itself. But it was a marked improvement that we have to admit to. You could think that Tesla FSD would never figure out how to drive properly in winter conditions, which might be a sad admission for customers in Canada and other northern regions.
However, things are not that bad because a bug-fix release visibly improved things. Fred Michaud tested the FSD 10.69.25.1 in the snow in Canada, and the videos he posted look encouraging. Far from perfect, but his Tesla Model 3 LR AWD could still navigate and find its way across snow-covered roads with very few hiccups. In the video below, the software took the wrong way initially, but corrected its mistake with a U-turn in the parking lot. A Stop sign overshoot might be its biggest mistake, which is still impressive.
Other videos on his page show how Tesla FSD tackles snow at night during a snowstorm, with equally impressive results. It can get stuck when it encounters deeper snow without disengaging, or it can give up in slippery conditions. In this regard, FSD is still far from being as good as a human driver because Fred gets out of these situations without a sweat. The AWD setup and, no doubt, good winter tires help.
@WholeMarsBlog @aelluswamy @elonmusk
— Fred Michaud (@FRED__MICHAUD) January 17, 2023
Has anyone ever seen something like this ?
FSD 10.69.25.1 make impressive maneuvers in the winter time pic.twitter.com/DiFi2JS2ud
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