Originally published on Tesla Oracle.
Most often, we see Tesla Autopilot being tested on the highway (or city streets) where there are plenty of clear road markings. However, in a recent video, a bunch of Tesla owners tested Autopilot on a race track driving a Model Y Performance.
This is a private race track owned by Out of Spec Motoring, which also previously tested whether or not this vehicle could drift. The team’s final verdict on that track trip was that “the Tesla Model Y Performance rips through the track like a rally car.”
While testing the Model Y on Tesla Autopilot, we can witness that the vehicle handles most of the turns easily except for that sharp ~180° one at the nose of the race track. For ease of understanding, I traced the race circuit using Photoshop (see image on right).
Tesla has been making continuous improvements to its vehicles overall, but especially to the Autopilot features. The self-driving software is able to detect more and more objects after over-the-air software updates, as well as handle different road conditions. The recent Tesla firmware update 2020.12.6 added the ability to read traffic lights and stop signs, and in a further update, the car can also detect pedestrians (on foot or bicycle) Watch the following video for demo.
Although there are no road signs or road markings to detect in the testing conditions, Model Y Autopilot was successfully able to detect and avoid the traffic cones laying on the side of its path — very impressive to look at when the car’s center touchscreen also shows the cones in the visualization in the exact spot as it passes by.
One other interesting bit of information also comes from the race track video — a Tesla Model Y’s max speed in reverse is 16 mph (25.74 km/h) compared to Tesla Model 3’s 15 mph (24.1 km/h).
The team also filmed some great drone shots of the Tesla Model Y driving on the race track at the end of the video.
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