As the winter season enters its full swing at the start of the year-end holiday season, Tesla vehicles are affected in a different way than normal cars. Cold weather conditions block the Tesla Vision and the automaker has found a solution.
Tesla vehicles depend on its neural-net-based Tesla Vision AI to drive themselves on Autopilot Full Self-Driving (FSD). Tesla Vision uses 8 external cameras of the vehicle to create a 360° view around the car to identify other vehicles, vulnerable road users (VRUs), road signs, and objects.
Normal cars driven by humans don’t have that many cameras. Tesla vehicle cameras are blocked due to snow and ice in extreme weather areas. Tesla mitigated this issue by upgrading its newer HW4/AI4-based cars with upgraded cameras. HW4 cars are in production since January 2023 and the Cybertruck is also HW4.
Yesterday, a Tesla owner shared a picture of his Tesla car covered in snow and there was a small round opening where the ice wasn’t present. The integrated heater with the camera of the HW4 Tesla vehicle melted snow off of its lens.
Following this post, another Tesla Model X owner shared a photo of his electric SUV that melted ice from the B-pillar camera (see above). This clears the camera’s vision and allows the vehicle to continue driving on Autopilot. A handy feature for regions where snowfall is a daily occurrence during winter.
The official Tesla AI account reposted the Tesla owner’s photo that showed melted ice off the camera. The reposted photo was paired with an interesting meme gif showing a man come out of a layer of snow and looked around his environment. The caption said “Tesla Vision rn [right now]”.
The heating, anti-glare and anti-shining capabilities are available in the new Hardware 4 (HW4) cameras available. The older vehicles (produced before January 2023) lack these features thus can’t melt ice blocking their view.
Tesla Model S,3, X, Y, and the Cybertruck also has a feature that melts ice and snow off its windshield, windows, and roof remotely using the Tesla phone app. It uses the internal cabin heating to melt this ice on the vehicle.
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Related Tesla Autopilot / FSD News
- HW4 Teslas and Cybertruck get Holiday Update 2024.45.25.5 and FSD v13.2.2 (Release Notes)
- Tesla HW4 cameras can melt snow to clear the Autopilot FSD Vision
- Tesla FSD v13 handles its first accident safely where human drivers failed (video)
- Tesla (TSLA) begins wide release of FSD v13 to HW4 vehicles, Holiday Update to follow in a few days
- Tesla rolls out FSD v13.2.1 to early access Cybertruck owners and HW4 cars
- Tesla HW4 vehicles are still waiting for the Holiday Update and FSD v13 wide release
