Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot continues to evolve at a rapid pace, as shown by a Model 3 owner who recently shared footage of his vehicle navigating a construction site in Goshen, IN without any issues. During the duration of the clip, the electric sedan was able to maintain highway speed despite the road having no lane lines on one side and traffic barrels populating the rest of the freeway.
In a message to Teslarati, Model 3 owner Jeremy Greenlee stated that he was actually skeptical of his vehicle’s capability to navigate the construction area while it had Navigate on Autopilot engaged. Nevertheless, as he entered the construction site, Greenlee was pleasantly surprised to see his Model 3 performing flawlessly. Based on the way the driver-assist system was able to handle the construction site, it almost seemed like the Model 3 was using the traffic barrels for lane approximation.
The experience of the Model 3 owner with his vehicle’s Navigate on Autopilot system all but highlights the consistent improvements that Tesla is implementing in its driver-assist features. Teslas are unique vehicles in the way that their capabilities improve over time, especially with regards to their Autopilot capabilities. A key reason behind these improvements is the evolution of Tesla’s Neural Network, which gets better through fleet learning.
Explaining this during Tesla’s Autonomy Day event last April, AI Director Andrej Karpathy noted that the company trains its Neural Network through vehicles in Shadow Mode. According to Karpathy, it is these data from the fleet that allows Tesla’s Neural Network to handle numerous unexpected conditions on the road, such as other vehicles cutting into a lane.
Navigate on Autopilot is a critical component of Tesla and Elon Musk’s plans to achieve Full Self-Driving, particularly as the feature has the capability to travel from highway on-ramp to off-ramp, and change lanes on its own. When Tesla introduced the Standard Range and Standard Range Plus versions of the Model 3, the electric car maker even moved Navigate on Autopilot to its Full Self-Driving suite.
Musk, for his part, has remained optimistic about the technology, stating that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite will be “feature complete” by the end of the year. The CEO also noted that Tesla is investing heavily in its Full Self-Driving technology. “[Autonomy] is basically our entire expense structure,” Musk remarked while addressing the attendees of Autonomy Day.
Watch Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot seamlessly handle a construction site at highway speed in the video below.