Tesla Continues to Open Up Superchargers to Other EVs; Adds Australia

February 1, 2023

By Lennon Cihak

Tesla opens Superchargers to non-Teslas in Australia

Beat Jau / TeslaFansCH

Tesla has opened up Superchargers to non-Teslas in Australia. All CCS-capable electric vehicles can now use select Tesla Superchargers.

Tesla originally launched the non-Tesla Supercharger pilot program back in November 2021 as an effort to further accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Tesla intended to open the Supercharger network to non-EVs by the end of 2022 in North America, but that has yet to happen. The North American launch is currently unknown, but it may be one of the later markets to open up to non-Teslas due to Tesla's proprietary port in the region.

In a blog post shared by Tesla, the company stated, “Access to an extensive, convenient and reliable fast-charging network is critical for large-scale EV adoption. That’s why, since opening our first Superchargers in 2012, we have been committed to rapid expansion of the network. Today, we have more than 40,000 Superchargers worldwide.”

Tesla adds that they’re closely monitoring congestion and listening to feedback from customers about the experience.

Countries in the non-Tesla Supercharger pilot program include:

Australia
The Netherlands
France
Norway
Germany
UK
Spain
Sweden
Belgium
Austria
Denmark
Finland
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Iceland
Italy

Tesla’s Focus on CCS

Tesla has focused heavily on rolling out the non-Tesla pilot program to countries and vehicles where the CCS2 connector is standard. This is pretty much everywhere except for North America, South Korea and China.

How This Pilot Program Helps Tesla Owners

Tesla’s Supercharger network is undeniably the best EV charging infrastructure currently available. It’s quite simply plug-and-play, removing the need to enter your parking spot number, swipe your credit card or activate the charger through an app.

Non-Tesla EVs will pay a premium when charging at supported Superchargers. Having Superchargers utilized more often could help reduce the price of Supercharging for everyone, especially at less popular locations. The cheaper charging rates for Tesla owners could be an incentive for non-Tesla owners to look into a Tesla.

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Tesla Releases FSD V12.4.3 to Employees

July 4, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Following the recent release of V12.4.2 to employees and early access testers, Tesla has now released V12.4.3 to employees, according to X user Farzad. The update is version 2024.15.15.

While we haven’t received a full set of release notes to compare against, it seems that this update won’t bring much other than bug fixes. We recently took a deeper look at the new features available on V12.4.2 here.

Update: As expected, the release notes remain the same as FSD v12.4.2 and this update just includes bug fixes.

Given how rapid-fire Tesla has begun releasing updates to internal testers, employees, and early-access customers, it seems there could be a couple more iterations of V12.4 before it hits customers, as Tesla tunes FSD.

Why so many Versions and Delays?

While nobody is happy about delays, one needs to keep in mind that Tesla has to keep safety as a priority for FSD releases. If a release goes out wide to hundreds of thousands of vehicles that are unsafe, there could be considerable impacts on people’s lives.

Beyond that, each subversion is Tesla adjusting their AI model, fine-tuning it to be able to better drive in both normal and edge cases. As such, watching these subversion releases go by is a good thing – at the end of the day, we’ll end up with a better, safer product.

Every version also has to be tested internally first among their dedicated ADAS testers, then among employees, and finally with Tesla’s early-access customers. Once all these people give a green light, and most errors and major bugs are addressed, does a release get the green light to go wide.

So, stay tuned for when this release goes out wider than this leak and possibly comes to your vehicle with nag-free FSD.

First Look at Tesla FSD v12.4.2 - The Update That Removes The Steering Wheel Nag [Video]

July 4, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla’s FSD V12.4.2 has landed in the wild – at least among early-access customers this week. There have been a few videos and some folks have begun to provide feedback on X, on the update and how it's going.

For now, it hasn’t gone wide to customers and only early-access testers and employees have it on their vehicles. FSD 12.4.2 is update 2024.15.10 and it’s expected to be available to everyone on update 2024.14 who owns or subscribes to FSD… eventually.

Consistent, Confident

Early-access testers have found FSD V12.4.2 to be considerably more confident, and more consistent when it makes decisions. V12.4.2 seems more confident when making unprotected left turns and encountering construction or complex interchanges.

They’ve also had more consistency and confidence with the Auto Speed feature, which adjusts the vehicle’s speed automatically based on traffic conditions, and also noted that it has improvements with lane selection, which was a larger issue in V12.4.1.

Users have also noted that the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System is more confident and can see better at night. On V12.4.1, the Vision-Based DMS was unavailable at nighttime, and nags would still occur – but on V12.4.2, this restriction appears to be removed.

Regressions

There are still some regressions, with @DirtyTesLa on X noting that V12.4.2 seems to fail a left turn on an unmarked dirt road that it has previously made.

@WholeMarsBlog also noted that he had one critical safety intervention and that FSD missed a turn onto the highway, noting it was a regression from his experience on V12.4.1. Overall, he has had multiple intervention-free drives.

Overall Conclusions

It seems that besides a few minor regressions, V12.4.2 is shaping up to be a good update. There are improvements to the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System, as well as improvements to decision-making and lane selection.

It is highly possible that V12.4.2 could be the version that unleashes the floodgates of nag-free FSD.