Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently announced that the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software will soon gain the ability to detect and avoid potholes. This statement was made in response to a user inquiry on the social media platform X.
The promise of pothole avoidance is not new for the automaker. A similar feature was publicly discussed by Musk in 2019, though it has not been implemented in the intervening seven years despite the company's extensive collection of road training data.
Tesla currently operates a robotaxi service with limited autonomous capabilities. The company is also preparing for the upcoming launch of the Cybercab, a vehicle designed to operate without a steering wheel and without a human driver present.
The FSD system relies on a vision-only approach to navigate roads. While the software can currently handle highways and surface streets, it has historically struggled to identify and maneuver around road surface defects like potholes.