FSD Pothole Avoidance Is Finally \"Coming Soon\" (And Grok Got a Real Upgrade)
Two things happened this week worth paying attention to if you drive a Tesla. Elon confirmed on August 31 that pothole avoidance is "coming soon" in FSD, and the 2026 Summer Update shipped with Grok changes that make voice control genuinely more useful. Let me take them in order.
Seven Years From Request to "Coming Soon"
An owner first asked for pothole avoidance in April 2019. Tesla started labeling bumps and potholes in August 2020, which was the data collection phase. The feature has been listed in FSD v14 release notes as an upcoming improvement. And now, in late August 2026, it's "coming soon."
I'm not going to pile on about the timeline because getting FSD to reliably identify and respond to road surface anomalies is genuinely hard. But "coming soon" after seven years earns at least a raised eyebrow.
The practical upside is real, though. Anyone who's driven FSD on city streets knows the car will occasionally jolt through a pothole that a human driver would have steered around. If the system can start doing that consistently, it's a meaningful quality-of-life improvement. The data pipeline has been running since 2020, so the training data exists. Whether "coming soon" means next month or Q1 2027 is the actual question.
Grok Can Actually Do Things Now
The 2026 Summer Update expanded what Grok can control in-car, and the list is worth going through. You can now ask it to fold mirrors, adjust wipers, change temperature, open the self-driving app, open the glovebox, and control headlights and climate. Beyond hardware control, it can place phone calls from a paired phone, search streaming services, queue music, adjust climate, and search through the Controls panel.
And it can adjust driving dynamics and handling preferences via voice. That last one is notable because it means switching modes without taking your hand off the wheel or tapping through menus.
The version showing these features in a Model Y demo was FSD v14.3.8 on software 2026.26.6.5.
Two changes matter more than the expanded command list. First, response latency is improved. This was my main complaint about Grok when it launched. Voice assistants that make you wait feel broken even when they eventually give the right answer. Second, it now accepts multiple commands in a single sentence. "Fold the mirrors, turn up the heat, and queue something on Spotify" as one request is how people actually talk. Handling that instead of requiring sequential commands is the right call.
Where This Actually Lands
Grok in-car has moved from demo feature to something I'd actually reach for. The combination of lower latency, multi-command support, and real hardware control (not just answering trivia) puts it closer to useful. It can also answer questions about the vehicle and recent software update features, which beats digging through the Controls panel while parked.
Pothole avoidance is harder to assess because it isn't out yet. The data groundwork was laid in 2020. The v14 notes have flagged it as coming. Now there's a public "coming soon" from August 31. That's three signals pointing the same direction, which is encouraging. But FSD features have a history of living in release notes longer than expected.
The Cybercab also launches this Thursday, which is separate from your Model 3 or Y but will tell us something about where the broader FSD stack stands in real-world deployment.
Source: Teslarati