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Just Drove My Model Y in Light Rain at Night for 1st Time with "Tesla Vision" (2022.36.6): Autopilot was **Unusable**

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I just drove my Model Y for the first night time drive in light to moderate rain for the 1st time since accepting an update to one of the supposed "Tesla Vision" builds. Ooooh boy...it's not looking good for Tesla.

Note: I recently jumped from software version 2022.20 to 2022.36.6. The vehicle has radar, but this build supposedly uses the radar for almost nothing at this point. Greentheonly (who is also on this site) isn't convinced it's *never* used but we can argue that in one of the open threads.

Anyway, I was on a portion of a major highway with good lane markings -- I66 eastbound in Northern Virginia -- driving in light to moderate rain. Definitely not a torrential downpour.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the vehicle was nearly **un-driveable** with Autopilot engaged under these circumstances. I'm completely stunned by how bad it was and how I had to nurse the vehicle constantly to get any Autopilot features to even work or agree to engage.

Summary:

- Far more frequent occurrences of the "XXX Camera is blocked" notification than ever before. This was rare for me previously. On this drive, it was consistently on for the entire 30 minute drive despite no cameras being physically blocked, just typical light to moderate rain.

- Near constant "Autopilot speed limited by limited front camera visibility" messages. It wouldn't let me set the Autopilot cruise control speed more than 60 or 65 MPH, but inconsistently.

- Wouldn't honor whatever speed it reluctantly agreed to. People were passing me left and right well >65 MPH, but my Model Y was slowing down below *40 mph* and slowing. I had to continually step in and put my foot on the accelerator to get it to honor whatever speed it had agreed to. There wasn't anyone in front of me that would've forced the slow down. I kept wondering WTF was going on.

- The "Regen braking limited" notification stayed on the entire drive due to lowish temperatures, but it wasn't *that* cold. Note that I drove our Volvo XC40 later last night on a grocery run and had full regenerative braking at even colder temperatures.

- Forcing us accept "auto high beams" and "auto wipers" when Autopilot is engaged is **clearly** a disaster and neither worked reliably. The high beams were constantly coming on and off the entire drive inconsistently, often flashing people when I drove under overpasses. The wipers were *continually* set poorly. I had to manually fight both of these the entire drive, a non-ideal distraction when driving in the rain at night.

I'm utterly *p*ssed* about the continually degrading interface and performance of the vehicle. I could sell it for at least $10K *profit* at this point, and am strongly considering it.

I mean...wow. Holy &^%$# it's bad. Tesla needs to try and salvage this instead of wasting time on nonsense like "light shows" and fart apps. It's awful.

- B

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"E-Cars parked at Tesla Supercharging Stations in Germany, under cloudy sky" by verchmarco is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
(Image added by admin for purpose of TMC Blog)
 
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Well actually, they only have to provide just enough data to make their claim, then everyone reading the claim that doesn't believe it has to be able to make an informed dispute of that claim to be able to put the claimant back in the position to provide more data to re-support the claim.
Their claim that FSD is safer than human may be true but the data does not support it. Their control population of human drivers is not correct. “Winners bias” is well understood error in statistics. You can Google it.
 
I did a long drive last December in moderate to heavy rain and I was impressed how well AP worked…

As stated upthread, be very, very cautious using any form of cruise control in heavy rain. It may work well, up until it doesn’t.

I was once driving my wife‘s 2000 Jaguar XJR in heavy rain on I-40 near Tampa. Foolishly, I had cruise control on. Instantaneously the car just began a pirouette, spinning around a few times before slamming into a guardrail. Luckily only a few minor bruises. Since then, I’ve been pretty paranoid driving in any rain heavy enough to cause puddling on the road - hydroplaning is real and not to be taken lightly.
 
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Exactly! Also, avoid AP in snow conditions. Hence, I do not believe FSD will be able to replace humans anytime soon. It is a great driver assistance technology, it will become better and better but in much more limited scenarios than what a human can do.

When AI beats a Finnish rally driver then we can start talking about parity :)