When I was interacting with Tesla owners from Australia in a private Facebook group earlier today, a strange post appeared.
A user posted a pic of a Tesla Model 3 center display while the car was running on Autopilot. This photo showed a new speed sign which is circled in red with a water droplet icon underneath.
This new speed sign also shows that the speed limit in wet road conditions should be reduced by 4 km/h (80 km/h vs. 84 km/h Max with speed sign detection).
According to the owner of this Tesla Model 3 (who asked to remain anonymous btw), the road was wet and it was rainy when this new icon appeared which he has seen for the first time. Several other group members also confirmed that they have seen this for the first time.
Autopilot might have detected the wet road conditions by using signals received from the windshield wiper rain sensors. Tesla algorithm for this function might also get signals from tire traction on wet roads. Maybe the camera feed to neural-net is now able to correctly distinguish between dry and wet conditions but we cannot say anything for sure at the moment.
Elon Musk just recently said that the upcoming FSD Beta V9.0 update will be massively better at handling bad weather conditions, this might be a precursor to that.
This specific car has the latest Tesla software update version 2021.4.15. According to data from TeslaScope.com, this specific firmware update is being rapidly being rolled out to Tesla car owners in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia.
Since no release notes are currently available for this specific software update, there is no official word from on the deployment of this functionality.
If you are familiar with this new Autopilot wet road condition detection icon, you can post your experience in the comments section below.
Related: Watch how Tesla Autopilot handles ‘no driver in seat’ (a response to Texas FSD incident)
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