For a few months now, the Autopilot display interface has already been showing traffic lights in real-time; however, it appears that now Tesla has started releasing an update that allows its vehicles to stop when they detect that the traffic light is red. This improvement seems to be exclusive to the “early access fleet,” a group of owners who often test beta versions of Tesla updates before they hit the rest of the world.
The Out of Spec Motoring channel has a Model 3 belonging to the “early access fleet” since it has published a video on the social network Twitter showing the system in operation: the vehicle detects the traffic lights about 150 meters before it reaches them, seeing if they are red or green. As we get closer, it updates the distance and the status of the traffic light, and if it is red, it stops completely.
#Tesla #Autopilot stopping for red lights for the first time. pic.twitter.com/M0zkiqyypl
— Out of Spec Motoring (@Out_of_Spec) March 26, 2020
When the car stops, a notice tells us that we must keep our hands on the wheel, which probably means that once the traffic light has turned green, the vehicle will be able to resume driving entirely autonomously. However, this last point does not end up being evident in the video, so we will have to wait for future clips to see more clearly how the system works.
Initially, this function will only reach those who have decided to equip their vehicle with the FSD (“Full Self-Driving” or “Total Autonomous Driving Capacity”). The arrival schedule of the system is still unclear in all Tesla’s fleet. It is planned that at the same time, as the traffic light stops, the update will also be accompanied by automatic stops on the STOP signals. All these novelties will only be available in the United States for now.