Tesla takes FSD to New Zealand, and negotiates speed humps and building sites

Months after showcasing its supervised full-self-driving (FSD) software testing in Melbourne and Sydney, and more recently in the UK, Tesla has taken it to New Zealand, highlighting its capabilities ofdriving on narrow inner-city streets of Auckland.

The company’s Australia and New Zealand X account shared a nearly two-minute-long video of a Tesla Model 3 driving itself in and around Ponsonby, Auckland.

A caption with this post stated: “FSD Supervised testing in Auckland, New Zealand, Judder bars and all”.

During the drive, the blue Model 3 was seen going around tight road sections with multiple speed humps, which are what judder bars are referred to in the caption.

On some streets, there are cars parked on both sides of the road, meaning only one car can squeeze through. 

Tesla’s FSD system ducked behind the cars and to allow oncoming traffic to drive through before proceeding through when the path was clear. 

This is exactly how a human driver would drive on inner city roads, highlighting how close the system is to real-world driving.

On the route, the car is also seen to drive past a construction site with parked trucks and traffic cones.

On the back of this video, there were quite a few excited Kiwis who shared the complexities of driving around that part of Auckland: “Ponsonby is not an easy place to drive! And it moves off to the side to let other cars go in the narrow roads here – I was worried it wouldn’t know how to do that as it’s very much a politeness game,”.

As mentioned earlier, this is not the first time FSD has been spotted being tested in a right-hand-drive market.

In May, Tesla released a video of its supervised full-self-driving (FSD), which showed a Tesla Model 3 driving on Australian roads in Melbourne without any driver input on its trip. This excited many Australian owners who have been waiting for local testing for years.

Then in July, Tesla released another video showing a supervised FSD journey around the streets of Sydney, which highlighted a few landmarks.

The Sydney FSD trip started with the car seen going around a roundabout where the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera house are seen in the background.

A few days after that, the company’s country director, Thom Drew, responded on LinkedIn, clarifying that there are no regulatory blocks for the software to be rolled out in right-hand-drive markets of Australia and New Zealand.