A new video from Tesla owner and content creator Dirty Tesla shows FSD doing something drivers deal with every day — except the car handled it without any input. The clip captures a Tesla steering cleanly around what he calls 'more of a crater' than a pothole, adding another real-world data point to one of the more quietly anticipated features on FSD's near-term roadmap.
Not Yet Official — But Clearly Working
The timing here is worth noting. Pothole avoidance has appeared under 'Upcoming Improvements' in FSD (Supervised) release notes since version 14.3, which dropped on April 7, 2026. It showed up again in v14.3.4, v14.3.8, and the current v14.3.10 — meaning Tesla has been signaling this feature for several update cycles without formally activating it. Elon Musk reiterated in late August 2026 that it was 'coming soon,' a phrase that carries more weight now that videos like this are surfacing regularly.
What Dirty Tesla captured isn't an isolated incident. An earlier video from July 2026 showed a Tesla running FSD v14.2.2.5 making a subtle path adjustment to straddle a pothole. The prevailing interpretation among FSD observers: this isn't a dedicated, explicitly coded routine yet — it's the end-to-end neural network generalizing from training data. The model has seen enough real-world footage of drivers avoiding road damage that it's learned the behavior, even before Tesla has formally switched it on as a named feature.
How the Neural Net Reads the Road
Tesla's approach to pothole avoidance is consistent with how FSD v14 handles most perception tasks: the end-to-end neural network processes camera feeds and makes driving decisions without a rigid rule-based layer on top. For potholes specifically, the system is being trained to estimate depth, location, and risk level, then decide whether to slow down, steer around the hazard, or hold the current line. The fact that it's already doing this in the wild — before the feature is formally documented as active — suggests the training data pipeline is ahead of the official rollout schedule.
Critically, this is a software-only enhancement. No new hardware is required, which means the full FSD-capable fleet is in scope once Tesla flips the switch. That includes HW3 vehicles running FSD v14 Lite, the distilled architecture that began rolling out in late July 2026. The most recent update, 2026.27.10 (FSD v14.3.10 for AI4/HW4 cars), shipped on September 19 with 'Automatic Collision Evasion' as its headline feature — pothole avoidance remains in the 'upcoming' column, but clips like this suggest the gap between 'upcoming' and 'here' is narrowing.
Why This Matters Beyond the Viral Clip
Pothole avoidance sounds like a convenience feature, but it sits at an interesting intersection of comfort, safety, and hardware protection. Suspension damage from road hazards is one of the more common and costly maintenance issues EV owners face — EVs tend to run heavier than comparable ICE vehicles, which puts more stress on components when a wheel drops into a hole at speed. A system that consistently identifies and avoids road damage isn't just a party trick; it's a meaningful reduction in wear over the life of the vehicle.
The broader signal here is about FSD's generalization capability. The fact that the neural network is producing pothole avoidance behavior organically — before it's been formally activated — is a reasonable indicator that Tesla's data flywheel is doing what it's supposed to do. Every mile driven by the fleet feeds back into training, and behaviors that experienced human drivers perform automatically are gradually being absorbed into the model. Dirty Tesla's crater video is a small but concrete example of that loop in action.
The feature's formal arrival in release notes is likely a matter of when, not if. When it does land as a documented capability, it will be one of the cleaner examples of FSD moving from 'impressive demo' to 'everyday useful' — which is exactly the transition Tesla needs to make the case for wider supervised autonomy adoption. For now, keep an eye on the road ahead. Your FSD might already be doing the same.
Related Gear
Gear up your Tesla with tested, custom-fit BASENOR accessories — shop Tesla accessories →
Sources & reporting notes
The links below identify the material source records used for this report.
- @DirtyTesLa on X (2026-09-24T01:03:49.000Z) — Direct source
Source links are preserved as published or accessed. See our editorial standards and corrections policy.
The BASENOR Editorial Desk covers Tesla, SpaceX, and related technology, curating reporting from primary sources — official accounts, regulatory filings, and software release data. Every article passes source-record and fact-checking review before publication. About the newsroom.
This report was curated by the BASENOR Editorial Desk from the sources listed above. Read our editorial standards or email editorial@basenor.com to report an error.
