FSD Beta (11.3.6) with no cell coverage on mountain roads

I spent two days at Gila Hot Springs, NM. I drove from Silver City but I took the long way through Mimbres to avoid some of the really twisty parts of the road. On a previous trip FSD worked like a champ on the really twisty parts but I was not comfortable trusting it with my life.

There was no cell coverage from Mimbres to the hot springs. about an hour each way on NM-35 and NM-15. I did connect to wifi at the hot springs.

FSDb did really well on these winding mountain roads! I probably didn't need to intervene at all but I did a number of times, often when a big pickup truck with a large trailer was coming in the opposite direction. Once or twice it confused a scenic turn off with the main road. I tried to err on the side of caution instead of pushing FSD to its limits and giving it a chance to self correct.

On the way home, about half way back to Mimbres, after roughly 45 miles or 1.5 hours of driving without cell coverage, both autosteer and TACC became unavailable right after an intervention. I eventually got TACC back but autosteer did not become available until I reached Mimbres and cell coverage was restored. This may have been a coincidence because I stopped briefly in Mimbres hoping that the stop would bring autosteer back.

I had been periodically checking for cell coverage by trying to use voice commands and I also periodically tried to get autosteer back. The first time I got cell coverage was when I stopped and that was when autosteer came back. Again, it might have been a coincidence but this was the first time I can remember losing FSD for more than a minute or two (not related to road conditions).

There were no red hands of death or anything like that, just temporarily unavailable.

I was happier with FSD on these winding mountain roads than I was back in town where it would often try to make stupid lane changes. I disabled the reroute around traffic feature because it would consistently reroute me out of the direct route away from a nearly empty road to the most congested and dangerous few blocks in town. Perhaps this bad traffic data was causing the "stupid" lane changes too. There would be yellow lines on the map and only one or two cars!

BTW: I tried the same trip last year on AP but it would almost immediately disengage and I don't blame it. I am extremely impressed by how well FSD did.

BTW-2: The nearest supercharger is about 90 miles away from the hot springs. The round trip would take about 88% of the Model Y LR battery but there is a nearby RV park where you could recharge.

 

[ewoodrick]

When you get a strike, the only way to get it reenabled is to park the car, exit it and get back in.

Cell coverage isn't needed for much. You lose the ability to use voice commands, but you need to route, you can always type it manually.

 

[uscbucsfan]

When you get a strike, the only way to get it reenabled is to park the car, exit it and get back in.

Cell coverage isn't needed for much. You lose the ability to use voice commands, but you need to route, you can always type it manually.

This is not correct. Putting it in park and then drive will re-enable it. You don't need to get out.

 

[EVRider-FL]

About 4 years ago I used regular (non-beta) FSD on Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway without cell coverage (at times), and the car did fine, even though the map didn’t display anything when there was no coverage. GPS is enough.

 

[BitJam]

When you get a strike, the only way to get it re-enabled is to park the car, exit it and get back in.

Cell coverage isn't needed for much. You lose the ability to use voice commands, but you need to route, you can always type it manually.

I do a lot of my driving where there's no cell coverage or wifi so I'm aware of the limitations. You also lose streaming, web browsing, traffic congestion, and satellite map data. It also seems that some details/points of interest are missing from the road maps. Spotify does a good job of caching a playlist so it keeps playing well after cell coverage is lost.

As I tried to indicate, there was no red steering wheel displayed and there were no strikes:

Someone recently reported that their car uploaded 7 gigs of data over their home wifi network after an FSD beta drive so there are some circumstances where Tesla does a lot of communicating with the FSD cars.

There are very few Teslas in my area. I've seen a total of five and three of those had out of state plates. Maybe my FSD drive was providing Tesla with useful information or maybe they were less sure of how well FSD would do on these roads.

It seemed odd that I lost autosteer right after I (not the car) intervened and then I got it back right when I got cell coverage back. It's certainly not proof of anything but it's an interesting data point. I posted it here to see if anyone else had a similar experience, or had other longish FSD drives without cell coverage.

For example, here is a wild guess: if the user is taking over frequently it might be a sign that something is wrong so Tesla will disable autosteer until it can do a deeper dive but it can't do a deeper dive until there is connectivity. Or maybe there is a buffer that records user interventions and if that buffer gets filled then autosteer is disabled until the buffer can be uploaded.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

 

[ewoodrick]

This is not correct. Putting it in park and then drive will re-enable it. You don't need to get out.

Not in my experience, it has to see the seat sensor deactivate and door open. I've tried just the quick park and go, it didn't work for me.

 

[uscbucsfan]

Not in my experience, it has to see the seat sensor deactivate and door open. I've tried just the quick park and go, it didn't work for me.

Maybe something is wrong with your car? Most pull off on an exit and hit park at a stop sign and then get right back on.

 

[ewoodrick]

I do a lot of my driving where there's no cell coverage or wifi so I'm aware of the limitations. You also lose streaming, web browsing, traffic congestion, and satellite map data. It also seems that some details/points of interest are missing from the road maps. Spotify does a good job of caching a playlist so it keeps playing well after cell coverage is lost.

As I tried to indicate, there was no red steering wheel displayed and there were no strikes:



Someone recently reported that their car uploaded 7 gigs of data over their home wifi network after an FSD beta drive so there are some circumstances where Tesla does a lot of communicating with the FSD cars.



Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Lots of cars go through the large update periodically, even in urban areas.

As to FSD, that sounds like a different issue then.
First, and most importantly, the steering wheel has to be present before you can engage FSD. It was pretty bad a release or so ago, but seems to have gotten better. Just make sure that it is there.
For the wheel to enable, the car must be on a suitable road with enough features that it can verify that you are on a suitable road. Trying just before a hairpin turn probably won't get it. Just after it, with a suitable straight section, often will.
To increase your chance of it enabling, go below the speed limit until you get it enabled. That's often a problem on low speed back roads.


There hasn't been any evidence of impact on re-enabling FSD after the user-initiated disengagements that I know of.

 

[ewoodrick]

Maybe something is wrong with your car? Most pull off on an exit and hit park at a stop sign and then get right back on.

Not sure why there would be anything wrong with my car. That's a pretty far leap. It may have changed along the way.

 

[uscbucsfan]

Not sure why there would be anything wrong with my car. That's a pretty far leap. It may have changed along the way.

Because there have been numerous people that have discovered that they never had to open the door to re-enable Beta for a strike or going over the speed limit to the point where some didn't believe it was ever in place and started out as a rumor that everyone bought into.

 

[Darmie]

So with no cell coverage, there is no FSD beta? I guess that's in line with Tesla that uses it's own map servers and pulls fresh data in when you select a point to navigate to. I wonder if Autosteer would work in that same situation if you had not had a point to navigate to.

 

[uscbucsfan]

So with no cell coverage, there is no FSD beta? I guess that's in line with Tesla that uses it's own map servers and pulls fresh data in when you select a point to navigate to. I wonder if Autosteer would work in that same situation if you had not had a point to navigate to.

FSD Beta works with no cell or GPS data. You'll get a degraded message.

 

[BitJam]

So with no cell coverage, there is no FSD beta? I guess that's in line with Tesla that uses it's own map servers and pulls fresh data in when you select a point to navigate to. I wonder if Autosteer would work in that same situation if you had not had a point to navigate to.

I had FSD beta for most of my trip (a couple of hours) where there was no cell coverage. I lost autosteer for the last 10 or 15 minutes when I was out of cell coverage but this may have been a coincidence or it may have been caused by my frequent interventions.

The map was fine. There are situations when you travel to new places out of cell coverage and the map you need is not downloaded to the car but this is easy to avoid by simply planning out your navigation to the new places before you lose cell coverage. There is a thread here about someone traveling from the US to Canada who went through both the failure and the success paths of driving to new places with no cell coverage.

 

[caradison]

I notice a few mile stretch right after leaving my home where autosteer is unavailable, i assume its due to cell reception... no matter time of day or weather its always the same unavailable and i know cell reception is sketchy