Tesla Cybertruck Camera Warning in Snowstorm Sparks Debate Over FSD and Winter Driving

A Cybertruck owner posted footage of himself crawling through a snowstorm. He got hit with a warning that plenty of Tesla drivers have seen during heavy rain or snow.

Joe Fay uploaded a video of himself taking the big electric truck down a snow-covered road. A notice popped up on his screen: "Multiple cameras blocked or blinded. Clean cameras or wait for them to regain visibility."

Pretty obvious message. Fay commented on it as he kept driving carefully.

"'Multiple cameras blocked or blinded'? Yeah, the entire windshield is blocked and blinded," he said while recording himself navigating the storm.

Whether filming through the driver-side window or the windshield, visibility was shot. Through the front behind the Cybertruck's single wiper, his headlights just bounced off the snow piled on the ground.

According to him, he was using the big infotainment screen to figure out where his car was on the road.

"I can't see anything. Thank God my Tesla can see where the road is because, well, I can't, and I have no idea. I'm doing 12 miles an hour," he said before the video ended.

Are Tesla's Systems Useless in Snow?

People in the comments brought up different points about Tesla's monitoring systems.

One person said snowy conditions wreck the cameras because of all the slush and salt on roads gathering around the lenses designed to watch the environment.

"Tesla + snow and road salt. Not the best situation... front camera constantly dirty from road salt. It tells me to clean the front camera when in FSD, they block you from spraying it," they wrote.

Fay disagreed, saying his Cybertruck has AWD and good tires on it.

Another person said their Tesla's cameras got blocked by way milder weather. "They're not very good and thick, dense fog mine would not engage."

Others argued Tesla should put radar or LiDAR on its vehicles to improve road assessment. But some said LiDAR would be useless in conditions like Fay was driving in anyway.

LiDAR Won't Help in Snowstorms

Tesla's gotten heat from car enthusiasts for not using LiDAR, sparking debate over whether it actually helps driver-assistance systems. Elon Musk said back in 2021 that chasing LiDAR is a "fool's errand" for automakers and he doesn't think the tech helps road assessment or automated driving.

Years later in 2024, The Verge reported Tesla bought $2 million worth of sensors from LiDAR manufacturer Luminar. Despite Musk's opposition, looks like Tesla might be testing it.

A study from Ontario Tech University says LiDAR's performance tanks during snowfall. The abstract says snowfall degrades LiDAR through "signal attenuation, backscattering, false detections, and sensor surface contamination."

Same study mentions LiDAR's being used by tons of automakers for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems but snowfall "ultimately reduces visibility and detection reliability."

Are Teslas Good in Snow?

Consumer Reports says while AWD helps navigate snow and ice, tires matter more. Their testing found a front-wheel-drive Toyota Camry with winter tires performed just as well as an AWD Honda CR-V with snow tires. AWD cars with all-season tires didn't do so great though.

"We found that some of the all-wheel-drive vehicles in our fleet struggled to stay on course when equipped with all-season tires, even in the hands of our professional drivers," they wrote.

If you live somewhere with lots of snow, get an AWD car and swap tires in cold months, around Thanksgiving till spring, for better traction. Don't have AWD? Winter tires still make a huge difference.

Same logic works for Teslas. Regardless of AWD, switching to tires made for snow and cold weather makes commuting way better.

EVs and Teslas do have some perks for snowy roads though. PimpMyEV highlighted a few benefits electric vehicles have that might make winter driving more bearable.

First, massive battery packs are heavy so Teslas have a low center of gravity. Added weight makes them "more stable and easier to control in adverse weather conditions like snow and ice."

In 2018 Musk posted on X that Tesla vehicles, even rear-wheel-drive ones, do well on snow and ice. He urged drivers to stay away from summer or sport tires though, echoing Consumer Reports.