Tesla FSD Can Now Detect Car Washes and Activate Car Wash Mode Automatically

Tesla vehicles running the latest Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised software can now automatically recognize when they are approaching a car wash.

The new capability prompts the vehicle’s main touchscreen with a one-touch button to quickly activate “Car Wash Mode” before entering the wash bay.

The feature came to light after Tesla owner Jeff Lutz shared his experience on social media. He noted that Tesla FSD version 14.3.3 prompted his screen with the shortcut button as he was about to enter a car wash, prompting him to ask about the underlying detection scheme.

Yun-Ta Tsai, a Senior Staff Engineer for the Tesla AI team, confirmed the intentional design by replying to the post, stating simply, “Car knows. I trained it.”

While Tesla has not publicly detailed the exact technical mechanics behind the detection, users speculate the system relies on a combination of GPS fleet data for known car wash locations and real-time vision processing from the vehicle’s external cameras to identify the distinct infrastructure of a car wash entrance.

Tesla’s latest FSD can also work and detect drive thrus. This may be relying on something similar but to detect car washes.

Car Wash Mode is a utility feature in Tesla vehicles that closes all windows, locks the charge port door, disables windshield wipers, and turns off parking sensor chimes to prevent damage or accidental triggers during an automated wash.

The update streamlines this process by removing the need for drivers to manually dig through the vehicle settings menus while pulling into a wash bay. Now as for those on HW3 and FSD 12.6.4, this is not available yet. Maybe when FSD 14 lite comes?