Saturday/ navigating Capitol Hill’s streets at 2 a.m.
Tesla’s highly anticipated beta* version 9 of its Full Self-Driving software is out. This is the version of the software that is called Tesla Vision (camera) only; so it is not using the radar sensor’s input. (I don’t have FSD. I opted out of the FSD functions when I bought my car).
*A version of a piece of software that is made available for testing, typically by a limited number of users outside the company that is developing it, before its general release.
Gali @Gfilche on Twitter took his Model Y for a test drive through the streets on Capitol Hill here in Seattle at 2 a.m. this morning. Here are a few screen shots of a video (on YouTube channel HyperChange) that he posted shortly thereafter.
I know this intersection at East John St & Broadway well. It is always very busy, and even at this time of night there are some cars & pedestrians. The Tesla is about to turn left, and it waited for pedestrians to cross & for the oncoming traffic to turn. Then the light turned yellow, and it was not clear if the Tesla was going to stop or go. The driver intervened and pushed the brake. [Still from video on HyperChange channel on YouTube, posted on Jul 10]A closer look at the new look of the FSD Beta v9 interface. The edges of the road are marked in red, the median in yellow and the path of the car in blue. This is the black background for the night view; the day view would be white. [Still from video on HyperChange channel on YouTube, posted on Jul 10]It’s 2 a.m. in the morning, and drunk pedestrians are running across the street at this intersection, against the red stop light. The car has the green, but detected them, and slowed down; sped up again when the street was clear. [Still from video on HyperChange channel on YouTube, posted on Jul 10]Here are the monorail pillars that divide the two lanes on 5th Ave. This made for a scary moment: the beta version of the software seemed to NOT DETECT the pillars; they were not shown as obstacles in the interface the way they should have been. The car turned on the turn signal to initiate a lane change, at which point the driver intervened and overruled the car. So yes, looks like there are still a few SERIOUS flaws that have to be ironed out in the software. [Still from video on HyperChange channel on YouTube, posted on Jul 10]
