Tesla updates its Autopilot auto lane change animation

Tesla has made a slight change to its Autopilot auto lane change animation in a new software update this week.

Throughout 2019, Tesla has been making a few gradual updates to the real-time render of the vehicle’s surroundings, which Tesla calls “Driving Visualization.”

In May, Tesla started pushing a new software update (2019.16) to its fleet with a bunch of updates to its Sentry mode and Driving Visualization features, as well as a few new features.

Tesla wrote about the new driving visualization in the release notes:

The driving visualization has been adjusted to automatically zoom in and out to better utilize screen space and inform you when a vehicle is detected in your blind spot. The visualization remains zoomed out when driving on highways.

The automaker has also made the rendering of the car sharper.

Now with a new 2019.28.3.7 (for users in the early access program), Tesla is introducing a new type of “Driving Visualization” for the auto lane change:

https://twitter.com/dollarn9ne/status/1165103512436363264

The new update seems to show an animation of where your vehicle will end up in the next lane after the lane change.

Electrek’s Take

I like that, but I think it could take some getting used to.

At first, and if you only catch a glimpse of it, it looked to me like it was a car in the right lane, which would be a problem if you are changing lanes.

But ultimately, it makes it clearer that the car is doing a lane change.

In this case, it is an “auto lane change,” but it is activated by the driver. It would be more useful in the truly auto lane change under “Navigate on Autopilot.”

In the bigger picture, I like that Tesla has been making a lot of improvements to its Autopilot Driving Visualization, but I’d like them to specifically fix the bug with cars frantically moving around when stopped or at low speed.

Tesla’s Autopilot on v9 shows great improvements when it comes to rendering the surroundings on the screen, but I’m often getting those weird bugs when stopped or at low speeds. pic.twitter.com/uvfflQUaKw

— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) October 15, 2018

It’s not really a big deal, but it doesn’t inspire confidence when that’s supposed to be what Autopilot is seeing.