Around September 2021, after years and years of pleas by owners, Tesla began including waypoints in the navigation interface. In the initial releases of this feature, waypoints weren’t editable, and FSD beta testers did not receive the capability because they were on an earlier branch of the software stack. Version 11 and FSD beta version 10.8, which dropped in late December, addressed both issues bringing beta testers back onto the main branch (at least for a while), and Tesla added the ability to edit the waypoints.
Unfortunately, almost everyone struggled to use the waypoints effectively for a variety of reasons, including:
- Stop vs. Via: Each waypoint is considered a stop. There is no way to configure it to be a “via” location. You must stop and place the car into park and then back to drive before the navigation software credits you for visiting the waypoint.
- Hitting the pin: Waypoint locations are often not accessible by the vehicle. In these cases, the navigation software never registers a visit to the location. If you move past the waypoint in this instance, the navigation algorithm returns to the pin because it thinks you haven’t been there yet. This behavior is frustrating and, combined with the first issue, makes waypoints almost unusable in their current form.
- Adding new points: Another challenge is adding locations to the route list. When you manually identify a waypoint and add it to the route, the software adds it as the first destination, not the next one in the list resulting in a route order different from what you desired.
- Saving and restoring a route: The current user interface offers no way to save and load a route. If you want to replicate a driving route, you have to recreate the route all over again from scratch.
As an FSD Beta tester, receiving the waypoints with the V11 software was exciting. Unfortunately, my excitement began to wane as I watched other beta testers struggle to use them for their testing routes, and the waypoints were all but unusable. Then, I saw this video by CYBRLFT showing how to remove waypoints as you go to effectively turn them into vias and began to wonder if there were additional techniques we could use to make waypoints more effective. Yes, there are.
After fiddling around with the interface for a while, I identified a few simple steps for creating, ordering, saving, and running a route by leveraging your favorite locations. In the five-minute video below, I walk you through the simple steps to make waypoints useful for all Tesla owners. Please let me know your thoughts about this approach by commenting below or on the YouTube video.
