Over the past several years, we have seen self driving and drive assist features make significant strives towards full autonomy. No system is there yet, although Waymo and GM Cruise Automation have made good progress towards complete autonomy in Geofenced areas. While Tesla has dominated the conversation on partially autonomous systems with Autopilot as it works on Full Self Driving behind the scenes.
Tesla has continued to build up Navigate on Autopilot features in recent months. This includes automatic lane changing without the need for the driver to initiate with a turn signal. Under the right conditions, Autopilot can also now alert drivers if they are about to run a red light.
More About Autopilot
Now we have been sent a pretty impressive video of a Tesla Model S safely navigating a left hand turn at an intersection. The Model S stays in its lane through the turn, merging into the center lane after turning. It does not follow the car ahead of it that moves into the far right lane after the turn.
As far as we are aware this is not an advertised feature of Autopilot yet. The intersection is well marked, so this likely assisted Autopilot in its travels. There is certainly no guarantee that every Tesla on the road would successfully navigate similar intersections. So drivers should stay alert if attempting for themselves. Although we have heard of this capability from Tesla owners over the past few months, it has been characterized as only sporadically working. In addition, we had seen no video evidence of it occurring until now.
Be sure to check out the performance in the video above. Oh, and before you mention it: this is a 90 degree turn, not a 45 degree turn as stated in the video. As the owner says in a comment on his YouTube page, he misspoke when he said 45 degree turn and meant to say 90 degree.
Video Description From My Tesla Adventure on YouTube:
My AP 2.0 Tesla Model S just successfully navigated a left hand turn through an intersection while in autopilot.