r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Even-Definition • 7d ago
Discussion Seeing Cybercabs testing around the Twin Cities got me thinking about how brutal MN winter is going to be for the fsd stack
Saw one of the Cybercab test cars running around the twin cities MN metro the other day (looked like it was doing validation loops near 35W and 494). It’s exciting to see them testing out here instead of just cruising around sunny Austin or California, but winter in the Upper Midwest is about to throw the ultimate edge cases at that perception stack.
There’s that famous observation about how Inuit languages have dozens of distinct words for different forms of snow and ice. To an autonomous neural network, that's not trivia—it's an engineering requirement. "Snow" can never be a single class label:
Black ice & the bridge problem: Powder, slush, packed granular snow, and sheer glaze look wildly different, and their friction coefficient can swing from 0.85 down to 0.15 in a 15-foot stretch. Cameras can spot white snowdrifts easily, but harmless wet asphalt and black ice look virtually indistinguishable under flat, overcast skies.
Bridges freeze first because sub-freezing air flowing under and over the deck strips convective heat hours before the ground-insulated roadway drops. A camera can’t visually spot that drop in grip; the stack has to infer it in milliseconds from high-frequency motor torque and wheel-speed delta before the friction circle collapses.
Rut-following vs. legal lanes: Once we get an unplowed 3–4 inches, road infrastructure ceases to exist. Painted lane lines, rumble strips, and curbs disappear. Humans don’t follow legal lanes during a storm anyway—we follow the dirty ruts carved out by plows and semi-trucks, which usually straddle lane boundaries. If a planner forces map-defined lane centering, it steers straight into a high-drag snowbank. Plus, windblown snowdrifts create "phantom curbs" that confuse occupancy networks.
Regen dynamics on slick patches: Single-pedal driving is second nature on dry pavement, but aggressive regen on an unexpected ice patch can snap the driven axle loose before traditional stability control even catches up. Blending instantaneous motor back-torque with mechanical ABS when friction drops off a cliff is a massive controls problem.
Collecting edge-case data in California and Texas is easy mode. If an autonomous stack can navigate an unplowed, brine-slicked Minneapolis interchange at rush hour in January with zero interventions, it can drive anywhere on Earth.
Curious how you guys think they'll tackle the lens cleaning side of things long term.
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u/RosieDear 7d ago
Ain't gonna happen. That is, these cars are not going to run autonomously legally unsupervised in the winter at scale. Period.
If they do I'll sorta eat my hat. I'll tell you why.
You can't place a bet on the prediction market about Tesla getting true L4 approval in a place like CA (where you have to actually prove it works). There was only a single bet and that closed. That was "Will Tesla get L4 approval and deploy Taxis in California before the end of 2026?".
This was a few months back. Seems like easy money, right? I'm surprised many Tesla fans aren't betting the Farm on some of these.
Guess what the closing odds were? Over 100 to 1 against.
So we can say that not even one person in 100 believes Tesla will have true L4 cars in Cali.
That would seem to apply to MN or anywhere else also....anywhere that there are regulations.
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u/menjay28 6d ago
How many days of the year are the roads bad enough to make a difference? I swear everyone thinks for 6 months of the year there’s a foot of snow on the roads when it’s really just a few bad days throughout the winter. They should shelf autonomous cars those few days or hours of the days that the roads are bad, but the other 95% of the winter they will be just fine.
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u/montyp2 6d ago
In the last 3 years we have only averaged about 37 days a year where it snowed and even human drivers suck when it does snow
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u/Express_Objective615 10h ago
Yes. Many humans don't actually "follow the rules" and just do things like drive more slowly and carefully in bad conditions. The AVs do and will. Even just that "little" difference in driving makes a huge difference in safety.
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u/No_Calligrapher_7418 2d ago
Not to mention that every AVs L4 vehicle is unable to handle heavy weather conditions, not because of sensor stack or software but from a purely physical perspective.
You cannot convince me that a Cybercab, Zoox, or Ojai is capable of crossing heavy snow or debris in the road.
Every AV taxi fleet will have an L4 car and an L5 SUV / truck. L4s will go into the garages when weather gets really bad and the smaller in number L5 fleet will deploy. The L4s will have comparatively worse hardware and less sensors than L5s. L4 rides will be significantly cheaper than L5 rides.
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u/Express_Objective615 10h ago
Oh wow a person doing some actual rational thinking! So true. These problems aren't black and white. There's plenty of room for gray. That's a great point. There's less and less snow almost every winter too. My family tells me it's nothing like when I was a kid.
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u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 7d ago
Waymo is picking people up today in Minneapolis, just with a safety driver as an uber black. I expect when it releases it will be heavily restricted based on conditions… but not I bet it does actually release…
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u/Express_Objective615 10h ago
The driving task itself is the easier problem than the liability questions. I think we can all agree on that, now. The bet doesn't separate those two. Also the bet includes governmental decisions. The tech is a much simpler bet than that mess! 😂
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u/DungeonJailer 7d ago
Who said anything about 2026? No one thinks Tesla will be running autonomous cars in Minneapolis in 2026 other than Elon. Probably not 2027 or even 2028. I’d put even odds though on them having autonomous robotaxis running in the northern Midwest by sometime in 2029.
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u/Wooden_Bed377 6d ago edited 6d ago
Nah, not a chance unless they switch to lidar. They're technology just isn't good enough. They struggle with night time, much less winter. Waymo might have a shot though.
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u/DungeonJailer 6d ago
You: “Robotaxis will never be a thing!”
Tesla: begins running robotaxis in AustinYou: “they have safety monitors! They’ll never be able to do it without drivers in the vehicles! They need Lidar!”
Tesla: begins running without safety drivers.You: “they are only running a couple cars! They’ll never be able to do more than that because they crash! Elon was an idiot for not adding Lidar!”
Tesla: rolls out cybercab and begins scaling in Austin beyond just a couple active cars at a time.You: “they’ll never be able to operate at night or outside the sun belt!”
Those goalposts heavy?
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u/Wooden_Bed377 6d ago
Wtf, I mean no...the goalposts never even moved my guy. I love autonomous vehicles, your just an idiot if you think Teslas current technology gets you there in this scenario.
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u/ablx 6d ago
The technology is not the roadblock here, it's purely backwards facing regulations by cities and states. Tesla (and Waymo) have fully autonomous, driverless services running today in Austin TX and other places.
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u/Wooden_Bed377 6d ago
In the daytime, on very specific roads....yes, the technology is the roadblock here lol. Snow/dark/rain are awful for cameras and especially impact Tesla's cheaper system. Lidar is expensive though so they made a choice. Ive been involved in this technology before for work and am very well versed in it. It's going to be a hot minute before we can get legitimately good full autonomous, and when we do...you won't be able to afford it. It'll be legitimate ride sharing services.
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u/Express_Objective615 10h ago
I don't agree with the first part of what you say but do agree with the last part. Since getting to true autonomy is going to be expensive I think it's doomed, especially if you're counting on lidar. Doesn't matter if you have true autonomy and a super expensive solution. If I have enough money do I care if it's a robot or my private driver? No. So the better path is autonomous personal cars and lidar is too expensive for this. Tesla is able to produce a car that gets 95% of the way there with all the tech included, at the price of a normal car, and, it may even get to 100%. The regulations and liability are the "final frontier" and not the tech. So Tesla is on the correct path and those counting on expensive solutions are doomed to be, at best "niche" players IMO.
If you worked in this field, as I did, then you also know full well that the entire thing was based on the premise that removal of the driver would allow costs to come down enough to get people out of personal cars. I don't see that happening, especially with any expensive solution. So what business is left? Maybe trucking? At least what Tesla is doing has a shot at getting less humans driving.0
u/Vibraniumguy 6d ago
Disagree. Tesla's plan is to ramp up unsupervised miles in texas/Florida where regulations are less strict and then go to California/other states and go "here look at our 100 million unsupervised miles with no at fault accidents, we are level 4" and then get approved as level 4 SAE. It would be extremely dumb if california rejected them despite overwhelming proof of high safety. But yeah it might not happen in 2027 we will see
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u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 7d ago
First Tesla is not testing in Minnesota, Waymo is testing. You can actually get them on Uber sometimes now with a driver. The Minneapolis city council and the mayor are fighting over it right now with the mayor in support and the council not.
Fully autonomous probably won’t come till spring.
Our roads put a heavy strain on camera only systems that there are concerns over. It’s why you they will likely continue through the winter with the safety driver.
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u/somethingofaraddad 7d ago
So is Tesla just driving their robotaxis around here for fun? Testing sounds a bit more plausible to me, personally.
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u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 7d ago
Last I heard from the council meets Tesla drove 2 around the highway in July, basically just did a few loops around 610 where one of their manufacturing sites is off Brooklyn Park. The city put in controls around safety monitors and they hadn't been out since or were restricted away from any part of Minneapolis which basically cuts off everything from 694 down to the cross town.
I can check tomorrow, I drive by their Brooklyn Park site that they came with their local acquisition of a guys company.
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u/tonydtonyd 6d ago
Can you expand on the “controls around safety monitors”?
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u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 6d ago
They have a human driver. They have between 10 and 20 according to the last city council meeting. Some are mapping the city, some are picking up up using Uber but a driver is in the car.
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u/beren12 7d ago
Yeah. They are doing it in Philly too. And god are they ugly in person. It’s like a shit-gold color.
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u/somethingofaraddad 6d ago
Lmao. You losers will literally complain about anything. Shit colored gold? It's honestly sad that a car company upsets someone so much.
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u/jacob6875 6d ago
Elon could announce tomorrow that they decided to install Lidar on every car and this subreddit would somehow have a thread about how terrible it is.
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u/vixous 6d ago
He could announce his resignation. I’d be happy about that.
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u/jacob6875 6d ago
What would that change ? He still owns over 20% of the stock so buying a Tesla benefits him.
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u/vixous 6d ago
He could sell and donate some or more of it. Rockefeller and Carnegie started universities, Gates and Buffet are trying to end diseases like malaria, Dolly Parton gives kids books. Musk’s charitable cause is … Trump and MAGA Republicans?
We need better robber barons, or at least more fearful ones.
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u/Mattsasa 7d ago
You cannot get Waymo on uber in Minneapolis.
But yes Waymo is prepping to launch there, held up by regulation. Maybe a launch in 2028 when regulation is better.
But Tesla cyber cab is testing there too, I do not think there will be autonomous unsupervised cyber cabs in Minneapolis any year soon though
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u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 6d ago
You can't specifically order it. They said they had picked up passengers using it, which I am assuming is or was Uber because in other cities you can order Waymo's from Uber specifically.
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u/Mattsasa 6d ago
Yes in Atlanta and Austin you can get a Waymo on uber app, just by chance, without selecting. And in Nashville you can get Waymo on Lyft.
But there is no way to get Waymo in Minneapolis
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u/PineappleGuy7 6d ago
It's to pump stock before the earnings call. They'll disappear after that until the summer
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u/mrkjmsdln_new 6d ago
What neighborhoods / areas? Presumably if they are testing accidents would be filed with the NHTSA SGO ADS guidelines?
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u/gavrok 6d ago
Yes, to my understanding they would have to report crashes to NHTSA, but of course the driver interventions avoiding crashes are not reportable and the test Cybercabs do have a steering wheel and pedals for the safety driver.
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u/mrkjmsdln_new 6d ago
I find this SO INTERESTING. The law long before Tesla dabbled with Level 4 in Austin they needed to report incidents for the L2 cars anyhow. The solution for Tesla was always to ALSO REPORT NHTSA SGO ADAS incidents. They removed all pertitent details of the incidents just like they did in Austin for the frst six months or so. Eventually they did begin providing narratives and even retroactively. There seem to be CyberCabs everywhere meandering about and they must be getting hit once in a while. What is curious to me is the Model CyberCab has simply NEVER been filed in either the ADAS or ADS reports for NHTSA SGO. It seems these cars have simply never ever been struck so far. Amazing.
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u/HighHokie 6d ago
but of course the driver interventions avoiding crashes are not reportable and the test Cybercabs do have a steering wheel and pedals for the safety driver.
I mean yeah, that’s how it is for every brand on the road today. Things that don’t happen aren’t reported.
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u/Original-Condition77 3d ago
It's Minneapolis, so the only danger AVs have to worry about is getting destroyed in riots.
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u/No_Calligrapher_7418 2d ago
Black ice & the bridge problem: In my experience with hydroplanning on FSD, it is really good at handling it
Rut-following vs. legal lanes: FSD isn't programmed with lanes or biased with pre-mapping like other systems, it is, in my experience, really good about trusting the car ahead of it has seen something and will follow that car's lead like a human will.
Regen dynamics on slick patches: Honestly no clue. Haven't tried it. I am stupid/trusting enough to use FSD in pouring rain among many other conditions, I am less confident with it in snow so I tend to stay in during winter. My assumption is it would follow the hydroplanning / black ice issue and be able to adjust. Tesla put out a patent for wiper friction estimation so my assumption would be they are doing something similar/identical for their wheels.
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u/jacob6875 6d ago
FSD actually works pretty well on snow covered roads. It's not much different than a country road without any lines.
The only big problem I had is that if it spins the wheels long enough starting out it freaks out and wants me to take over.
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u/beiderbeck 6d ago
that's not a problem in the cybercab because there is no way to take over. so, no problem.
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u/Express_Objective615 2d ago
Also it seems like we'd see lots of videos with FSD messing up in snow and ice if it was that bad. But I am interested to see how it does. I think that worse conditions won't be as much of a problem as people think. Just my gut feeling based on experience in pretty bad conditions with FSD yet it handled it well.
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u/tech57 6d ago
Driving in shitty winter conditions is more about judgement than skill. There's scenarios where cars should not attempt to travel an area due to physics. Just like airports get shut down due to weather so will self-driving cars. So the key point will not be can a self-driving car make it down that hill but should it even try?
It's not about edge cases. It's about a self-driving car knowing if it's approaching an edge case or not. It's about pulling out of the driveway already knowing that while the first road is good there will be ice patches in shadows in the middle of curving turns along the route to work. It's about knowing where those patches are going to be before the car even gets close to one. Because it has already learned from experience.
There’s that famous observation about how Inuit languages have dozens of distinct words for different forms of snow and ice. To an autonomous neural network, that's not trivia—it's an engineering requirement.
So is "Go or no go". A self-driving fleet in a winter city will have sherpas and at some point plows on the front end and salt spreaders on the back. This means better road conditions for the self-driving fleet to return to full service quicker.
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u/Express_Objective615 2d ago
Yes and speaking of edge cases and even approaching an edge case, self driving cars follow just basic and general safer driving rules (driving slower in worse conditions) by default whereas with humans it varies widely. This type of driving, absolutely is, "edge case avoidance". You see humans driving horribly in bad conditions in ways that you'd never see an AV doing. Bad basic driving is exactly what causes "edge cases". That behavior of AVs alone, will make a big difference.
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u/tech57 1d ago
That behavior of AVs alone, will make a big difference.
Yup. Something I've noticed watching some videos is people commenting how good the self-driving car works. My response is always that's just basic driving skills that every 16 year old learns how to do. Most people just forgot and drive like assholes. Or they get pissed off at all the other drivers and just start driving like them to feel better.
2025.01.21
86-Year-Old Mom Uses Tesla FSD v13 Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9YVDuHLoQ0"I want to see how polite this car is."
People underestimate a lot of possibilities that a fleet of self-driving cars in a given area opens up. Back in the day I learned how to make it up a specific hill in the snow because I knew what speed I needed to be at to start that hill. Could I instantly tell every single car that will use that same route the same parameters they need to know to make it to the top of that hill? No. But self-driving cars can instantly. It can also phone back to the mother ship to bring out a plow and some salt just for that hill.
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u/Express_Objective615 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can’t blame those people. They actually don’t realize it because they’ve never even experienced it. But of course some still insist stubbornly that they are correct.
Also people forget that the behavior of self driving cars can be changed and literally enforced, by design. This is absolutely not possible with humans. The debate in Europe about FSD driving too fast is funny and a prime example. FSD behavior can be adapted, per country and per culture. Try that with humans. Doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and will never work.
You’ve also pointed out a glaring difference in human learning versus machine learning that people misunderstand. Once you teach one machine of the same type something, they all know it. Not true of humans at all. This where the argument about number of miles driven correlating to learning, breaks down. Also, a truly autonomous driving car can learn from observing non autonomous driven miles. A machine does not need to experience this directly, in order to learn it. Humans can also “learn from videos” but not nearly as well or as efficiently as machines. This is exactly why FSD has way more experience dealing with a high speed potential crash situation than probably any or all humans.1
u/tech57 1d ago
You can’t blame those people.
Oh I can and I do. I'm a big proponent of traffic flow and that means drivers have to put some baseline effort into driving.
The debate in Europe about FSD driving too fast is funny and a prime example. FSD behavior can be adapted, per country and per culture. Try that with humans.
Yup. Not even a debate. It just needs to be an optional setting.
Once you teach one machine of the same type something, they all know it. Not true of humans at all.
Key point about those intelligent machines is they know what to do and they also can self-enforce the rules. Which circles back to that debate. Say there is a country that doesn't want people going over the speed limit because that's illegal. Then the self-driving car needs a map of all the speed limits and be able to read posted signs. Oh, the human changed the setting to "I'm a race car mode" and went over the speed limit? Text message them a fine or automatically withdraw the fee from the payment account on file.
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u/Express_Objective615 1d ago
I’ve heard that Denmark does some interesting things to prevent bad driving. You give a deposit of say $500 when you register your car. If your record is clean after a year, you get the money back plus interest. But if it’s not, they keep it. Prepaid fines to make people behave seems like a good system. Force people to have “skin in the game” right from the start versus how we do it in the US.
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u/tech57 15h ago
Force people to have “skin in the game” right from the start versus how we do it in the US.
Pretty much yeah. People in USA think they can do whatever they want and they won't get caught. For them misbehaving is worth it. Because they don't get in trouble. There's multiple issues that created this problem. Until the incentives to create those issues is addressed the problem won't get fixed. A good start would be the repeat offenders.
I say this as a person who doesn't mind people driving around like they are a race car. There's a line somewhere between technical law and criminal negligence. Speeding on the highway isn't as bad as running a red light through a cross walk.
Take drunk driving for example. Once is a fuck up. Pay the fine and take some classes on some stuff but that class includes very clear guarantees on what will happen to them the 2nd and last time they get caught. Once is a mistake but twice is criminal negligence and the response should be pretty damn harsh and not just punitively either. Just imagine if getting in trouble involves a self-driving car. Lot easier to suspend someone's license when they can just use a self-driving car.
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u/Express_Objective615 10h ago
Your comments remind me also that driving is a unique thing that we all judge each other so harshly yet we all make mistakes. Cars and driving really do cause us to "objectify" each other and forget that we are human. I'm not excusing myself from having done this also. It's obvious that almost all of us overestimate what wonderful drivers we are yet harshly judge anyone else who makes a mistake. Of course it's because driving is dangerous and a simple mistake can result in death, that's a fact. My attitude is, let's admit we are all human and we are all aging humans who also slowly get worse at driving. My hope is that autonomy in driving will remove these problems.
Everyone's a critic until it happens to them. It's human nature. Which is also why, machines are just better at certain things.1
u/tech57 8h ago
Your comments remind me also that driving is a unique thing that we all judge each other so harshly yet we all make mistakes.
I'm not talking about mistakes. I'm talking about intent. Lots of people wake up every day and their intent is to be a selfish asshole. They could care less about traffic flow and getting caught doing stupid stuff while driving. I'm a guy which means at one point I was a male teenager doing really dangerous and stupid stuff in cars on public roads and not-public roads. My friends too. But most of us were smart enough to learn how to drive and learn our limits before we found out the hard way. Some teenagers didn't though. Some lost body parts while some lost their life.
harshly judge anyone else who makes a mistake.
I'm not judging people. Harshly or otherwise. If I see someone run an obvious red light that's not me judging them. That is them not giving a shit because they will not get in trouble for it.
Of course it's because driving is dangerous and a simple mistake can result in death, that's a fact.
Most people don't care. They should but they don't. My attitude is there really are base line minimum rules of the road. If people can not manage that then they should get in trouble until they choose to manage it. I've been in the car with other drivers. I've seen how people who have been driving their entire life barely making it around one near accident after another.
The thing with self-driving cars is it will take a lot of assholes off the road. The ones that remain will still drive like dicks but it should be safer for everyone. Like most things we could enforce better driving but we all just agreed to a certain number of acceptable deaths every day. With enough self-driving cars that problem goes away.
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u/rdkreddit 7d ago
Let them test!