Today many Australian Tesla owners (with FSD) received a new OTA software update for our Teslas. If you look through the release notes for version 2020.16.2.1, you’ll find a list of refinements, but there’s clearly some other, undocumented improvements to Autopilot.
Aussie Tesla owner and YouTuber @TeslaStraya recorded a regular drive with the new software and discovered the car reacted quite differently. When approaching a roundabout, Autopilot typically hands back control to the driver. This time, it didn’t.
While this certainly isn’t the most severe roundabout, more of a left, right combination of corners, there are many examples of roundabouts like this. Imagine this roundabout was on your commute to work each day. What previously would have been a disengage, then re-engage by the driver, is now a simple path through the roundabout.
Obviously, this is not full roundabout support, baby steps.
There’s a lot more work to be done to deal with a complex intersection like roundabouts, especially when dual-lane roundabouts are a common spot for humans to do weird and unpredictable things.
Still the takeaway is that Tesla are making progress with Autopilot’s ability to navigate our city streets. Given we’re about to enter June, the end of 2020 (Musk’s updated target for FSD being feature complete), is rapidly approaching.
Personally, I’m really keen to see roundabout support elevated in the priority list, as I have 7 between my house and the center of Wodonga. While Adam’s second attempt through the reverse side of the roundabout was unsuccessful, the first does show signs of progress.
The update also adds the updated visualisation of people walking in front of the car, as well as a revised UI for Toybox.
There’s also a fix that was suggested by the Tesla community on Twitter, to have the car format the USB drive for use with Dashcam. This is a nice change as not everyone wants to concern themselves with formats.
