Tesla’s Autopilot mode almost makes the car feel like a self-driving car, where it is capable of staying in its lane and also being able to avoid obstacles. The good news for Tesla owners is that it looks like Autopilot is about to get a pretty huge upgrade in the form of a red light mode where the car could stop at a red light by itself.
This was discovered by Tesla hacker verygreen who found the feature hidden in the company’s latest software update. Based on the findings, it seems that this feature would allow a Tesla to detect traffic lights, but can also enable Autopilot to act on the color of those lights where if it is red, the car will stop itself.
This means that in terms of user input during Autopilot, this red light mode would result in less actions from the driver as the car would be able to stop at red lights. We should note that verygreen managed to access this feature due to his root access to the car. This means that the feature is not available to all users yet so don’t put your Tesla in Autopilot mode and expect it to be able to automatically stop itself at a red light!
We’re not sure when the feature is expected to be released to all Tesla owners, but it does sounds like a pretty nifty feature that we can look forward to. In the meantime, you can check out the video above which shows the feature in action.