Winter’s white curtain has already dropped on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Marquette tallied 18 inches last week, and on Alberta’s Bow Valley, where Banff’s ski hills opened early under a 30-centimeter dump. Minneapolis and Buffalo are next in line, with lake-effect bands forecast to bury roads by Thanksgiving. In these snow-swept zones, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) faces its toughest exam yet.
Version 12.5.6 sharpens edge detection in low light, but dash-cam reels from Duluth to Thunder Bay reveal stumbles: FSD freezes at snow-buried stop bars, slams phantom brakes on slush-slick interstates, and treats drifted shoulders like solid walls. Without LiDAR, the vision-only system struggles when lane lines vanish beneath powder and headlights scatter in flurries.
Elon Musk touts five billion FSD miles of collective learning, and Canadian beta drivers praise smoother runs on plowed highways. Over-the-air updates land overnight, faster than salt trucks. Still, until the neural nets master reading ruts in fresh snow or sensing ice under tire spray, human hands stay on the wheel.Would YOU trust FSD when the forecast turns frightful?