Will FSD work on gravel roads, no center line, no fog line?

[richguy]

I live in an area with roads that are not up to par. Potholes, frost heaving, no center lines, no fog lines, no charging stations, gravel or dirt roads are common.
FSD is never mentioned in regards to poor road conditions. We have little WIFI and cell phone service. How does FSD navigate? Satellite? mountains and trees
can block satellite service.
So if I buy a Tesla, I have to charge the car myself, can't use FSD?, can't get it fixed locally if I have an accident, and my business involves driving shuttles, tours,
and shopping in towns an hour away. Everyone here has a vehicle, but buying fuel is getting so expensive that I'm organizing a shopping business support
service as part of my business.
I've bought a Tesla charging outlet and am getting it installed for myself and as an emergency service for others with EVs.
I've installed solar power to help defray the electrical cost of charging EVs. The Tesla van could be useful to haul shoppers and groceries the hour long one way trips.
These trips would be especially handy during the winter when people don't like driving in snow and ice. I'm hoping that Tesla will sell me insurance to cover my
trips. However, I suspect that FSD will only do me good in towns and on the one good freeway we have in North Idaho.

 

[Tam]

...gravel or dirt roads are common...

The warranty for Tesla Model 3 and S only covers good roads. Only Tesla SUV Model Y and X cover off-road driving.

But you are right about FSD: They do the easy scenarios and humans have to do the heavy lifting.

 

[E90alex]

No. FSD uses map data and cameras. If the lane edge is well defined enough it might work to some extent, but don’t expect it to work well if at all.

 

[RTPEV]

My question to you is why are you even concerned about FSD? I certainly wouldn't let it drive itself on pothole & frost heave infested roads. I don't think it's worth the money (yet) on extremely well maintained / well marked roads. It certainly wouldn't be worth it on the types of roads you are considering. Don't bother buying it. Maybe someday down the road when it improves significantly and you can actually think of a use case for using it on those roads rather than just driving yourself, you can try a subscription.

For what it's worth though, it doesn't do horribly on poorly marked roads. Based on the visualization alone (as I said, I'm not interested in having it drive itself), it seems to recognize gravel, single lane roads very well in my in-laws neck of the woods where those kinds of roads are common.

 

[Supcom]

I have used FSDb on dirt and gravel county roads. This is not considered "off-road". The roads I've used it on were in good condition, with no big potholes, large ruts, etc. They were just not paved.

FSDb has actually worked well on these roads. It sees the road edges and stays within them. the car tends to drive at about 15-20 mph as I recall, probably as a result of traction control sensing the loose surface. It does tend to center itself across both lanes and, in the rare case of an approaching car, will more than need to be disengaged to prevent it from stopping.

Since I have a Model 3, I am cautious on which gravel roads I use. The Model 3 does not have a lot of ground clearance, so heavily rutted roads could become an expensive problem.

 

[archae86]

I've driven my model 3 on about 10 or 15 miles of Indian Service Road here in New Mexico, running in FSDb the whole time. Nowhere was it striped. The paving varied greatly mile by mile. At the best it was old hard-surface paving, broken up but somewhat even. At the worst it was dried mud that had pretty deep ruts in it.

FSDb was seeing the road edges pretty well throughout (you can tell from the display). and generally picked a reasonable route. But it was NOT ducking potholes. As there was zero other traffic, I did not get to see how well it shared the road with others. I suspect it would have been safe, but quite possibly might have slowed down more than some other users would think reasonable.

While I let it use the speeds it automatically chose, I could imagine that in your case you might find it either too fast or too slow. Fortunately, you can adjust that with a simple application of scrolling.

So I think you could use FSDb, scroll your way to better speed choices, and use your eyes to keep alert for potholes or other things to duck, and just do your job by cranking in the needed steering, then quickly re-engage.

By the way, a couple of decades ago I drove some non-paved roads in Idaho, once getting out to Custer in the Yankee Fork region, and another time roads within a few tens of miles of Sandpoint, so I have some clue of what you are talking about.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I live in an area with roads that are not up to par. Potholes, frost heaving, no center lines, no fog lines, no charging stations, gravel or dirt roads are common.
FSD is never mentioned in regards to poor road conditions. We have little WIFI and cell phone service. How does FSD navigate? Satellite? mountains and trees
can block satellite service.
So if I buy a Tesla, I have to charge the car myself, can't use FSD?, can't get it fixed locally if I have an accident, and my business involves driving shuttles, tours,
and shopping in towns an hour away. Everyone here has a vehicle, but buying fuel is getting so expensive that I'm organizing a shopping business support
service as part of my business.
I've bought a Tesla charging outlet and am getting it installed for myself and as an emergency service for others with EVs.
I've installed solar power to help defray the electrical cost of charging EVs. The Tesla van could be useful to haul shoppers and groceries the hour long one way trips.
These trips would be especially handy during the winter when people don't like driving in snow and ice. I'm hoping that Tesla will sell me insurance to cover my
trips. However, I suspect that FSD will only do me good in towns and on the one good freeway we have in North Idaho.

I drive on roads like that every day. FSD does great.

Dan

 

[JulienW]

Out of curiosity what is a "fog" line? Is that colloquialism for the edge lines?

 

[jeewee3000]

Out of curiosity what is a "fog" line? Is that colloquialism for the edge lines?

Would like to know as well. Unfamiliar with this concept.

 

[JB47394]

Would like to know as well. Unfamiliar with this concept.

C'mon guys. Google is your friend. Fog lines are the white lines on the outside of a road that exist to make sure we don't drive off the road surface due to limited visibility.

 

[BitJam]

I live in an area with roads that are not up to par. Potholes, frost heaving, no center lines, no fog lines, no charging stations, gravel or dirt roads are common. FSD is never mentioned in regards to poor road conditions. We have little WIFI and cell phone service. How does FSD navigate? Satellite? mountains and trees can block satellite service.

I live in rural New Mexico and I have routinely used Autopilot and FSDb on poorly marked roads, dirt roads, etc with no cell or wifi connection. The car uses GPS and internal stored maps to navigate. But even without a map (or with a faulty map) the car uses its cameras to figure out where the road is. It does a great job of finding its lane even with no markings.

Pot holes and frost heaves may give you trouble. You will probably need to manually avoid most of them. Do not get a performance model. The standard and long range are better at surviving potholes.

Here is a dirt road my car drove down just fine with no cell and no wifi:

It can handle roads that are much more tricky but this is the one I had a picture of.

Here is a video (by someone else) of Route 15 which I recently tried FSDb on. It did a great job. Last summer Autopilot would not stay engaged on it but FSDb worked like a champ with no cell or wifi.

 

[richguy]

Out of curiosity what is a "fog" line? Is that colloquialism for the edge lines?

a fog line defines the edge of the driving lane on the right side of the road. in most places it is illegal to drive outside of the fog lane...i've been ticketed for doing that when turning a corner at a spot where there used to be another complete lane for turning and the legal lane was freshly eliminated.