In a recent video, the Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot, can be seen dodging a barrel on the road similar to how a real human driver would.
The Tesla Model 3 is one of the best cars under $50,000 price tag. It is fully electric, offers 300+ miles of range and has the highest safety rating among all the other cars on the market. But what makes this car even more special is the inclusion of Autopilot.
The video was uploaded by the YouTube channel “Dirty Tesla” who regularly posts content related to Tesla Autopilot. In most of his videos, Chris (channel’s owner) tests the Autopilot in several different conditions and lets the automated system drive through them, without giving any manual input.
In his latest video, he showcases just how much better his Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot handles everyday driving tasks.
Tesla Model 3 Autopilot Avoids Barrels At Highway Speed
The video starts with the Model 3 traveling at a modest highway speed of 78 mph. The electric car is moving forward as it encounters a line of barrels trying to merge into its lane.
“I was coming into a construction zone and the barrels started to cut off my lane. So I wanted to see how Autopilot is going to handle this,” he said.
“And the car is doing a really good job of moving into the next lane as the barrels are cutting off the lane.”
Autopilot on the Tesla Model 3 takes note of that and starts shifting the car ever so slightly to the left to dodge these construction barrels. Suddenly, a misplaced barrel emerges in front of the car and the Autopilot easily moves the car around it, by changing lane, overtakes it and merges back into its original lane.
“The Autopilot, very gently, moves over into the left lane to avoid that barrel and then re-centers itself in the lane. It did this despite having to go over a dash lane line, which Autopilot will not do unless it’s making a lane change, said Chris.”
The Tesla Autopilot did all of this without any input from the driver and at no point did the system fail to recognize any of the objects on the road. The system also prioritized the safety of the passenger over crossing the dash lane line.
Chris and his wife Stephanie were sitting in the front row seats. While Chris was confident that the Autopilot would easily perform this maneuver, his wife was a bit scared.
Why Is Autopilot So Good?
The Tesla Autopilot keeps on improving with regular Over The Air (OTA) updates. The latest firmware update dubbed 2019.40.1.1 improved the lane-changing abilities of the Tesla Model 3 and also fixed the “Automatic” wiper settings.
There are thousands of Tesla cars on the road today and they all keep recording driving data and sending it back to Tesla. Using this footage, Tesla trains its automated system and makes it better.
This video of the Autopilot testing shows just how much the Model 3 and other Tesla electric cars have become in terms of self-driving capabilities.
