Tesla's gives an update on its upcoming more affordable vehicle
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The third-quarter earnings call for Tesla offered intriguing insights into the direction and focus of the company's upcoming next-gen vehicle, dubbed the Model 2 or the $25,000 car.
While drawing on a comparison to Cybertruck's production challenges, Elon Musk declared this vehicle will be more conventional for production with the overarching goal of achieving an unmatched level of manufacturing efficiency.
Functional Beauty: The Aesthetic Vision
The next-gen car is predicted to be the most produced car in Tesla's lineup, with the potential scale and reach of the Model 2, with implications suggesting it could match the combined volume of other Tesla models. The "high-volume, low-cost" will be simpler in design and technological features to achieve a production speed unprecedented in the auto industry. The mention of achieving "units per minute level that is unheard of" paints a picture of Tesla's commitment to scale and affordability.
Breaking away from the enchantment often associated with Tesla vehicles, Musk set the stage for a different kind of vehicle in the Model 2. Described as "utilitarian," this new vehicle won't be about enchanting consumers but serving a functional purpose. Despite this, Musk reassured that the car will still bear Tesla's signature beauty.
The Quest for Affordability
A dominant theme throughout the call was the relentless push towards reducing costs and improving operational efficiencies. Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's Chief Accounting Officer, pointed out the myriad challenges and variables in managing product margins, especially given the ongoing factory upgrades.
Nevertheless, company representatives remain unwavering in their dedication to cost reductions for 2024, showcasing Tesla's commitment to affordability. As Taneja describes, this "cost attack" strategy involves meticulous examination and improvement of every line item, highlighting Tesla's dedication to affordability at every turn.
Musk equated their cost-reduction strategy to a "Game of Thrones" where even saving pennies mattered. Musk highlighted the importance of such savings, highlighting how even small elements, like unnecessary internal stickers or QR codes, are being scrutinized for their contribution to the vehicle's cost.
Driving down the costs for the Model 2 isn't just about large-scale production adjustments; it's about scrutinizing every tiny detail. Musk illustrated the cost anatomy of a vehicle, emphasizing the challenge of saving even $0.40 on each of the approximately 10,000 parts in a car.
What This Means for Model 2
All these cost-saving strategies are directly tied to Tesla's aspiration to introduce the Model 2 at an unprecedented price point. By focusing on "pennies" and being "ruthless" in their cost-cutting measures, Tesla is gearing up to deliver a vehicle that doesn't just promise efficiency and sustainability but also unparalleled affordability.
The road to the Model 2 is evidently layered with challenges. Still, if there's one takeaway from the earnings call, it's that Tesla is more committed than ever to making the dream of an affordable electric vehicle a reality for the masses.
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Tesla has launched FSD V12.5.5 with update 2024.32.20, which has just hit early access testers. This update includes several new things, including the new end-to-end highway stack and bringing FSD to the Cybertruck for the first time. Tesla also outlined additional features to expect in future revisions of FSD.
The End-to-End part of the stack means that rather than hand-coding all the decision-making directly into FSD, Tesla now relies upon AI, trained upon hundreds of thousands of hours of footage gathered by its fleet, to make decisions.
This is key to rapid improvements and will help to bring Unsupervised FSD – and Robotaxi – to realization. We’re especially excited to see these improvements with the Robotaxi event just around the corner.
End-to-End Highway Stack
FSD V12 brought the End-to-End stack to City Streets, and the Highway Stack was still running FSD V11. With this update, end-to-end AI will now be used on the highway, which should be a considerable improvement.
When End-to-End was introduced on city streets, it brought some drastic improvements in how FSD was handled between V11.4.9 and V12.3.6. There’s likely going to be a similar level of improvement between FSD V12.5.4 on the highway and FSD V12.5.5 on the highway.
As of today, FSD still tends to sit in the left lane, Auto-Speed doesn’t function on the highway, and the speed limit can change drastically where it's incorrectly mapped.
With the end-to-end highway stack, we could see FSD correctly use the left lane to overtake vehicles and then come back into the middle or right lane, as required. In addition, we could see Tesla add Auto-Speed functionality for the highway so that the vehicle is able to more fluidly respond to changes in traffic and speed more naturally.
Upcoming Improvements
In the release notes for FSD 12.5.5, Tesla also updated the list of features coming in future FSD versions, some of which Tesla hadn’t previously discussed or mentioned in the FSD Roadmap. In Tesla’s release notes, they specifically mention these upcoming improvements:
Earlier and more natural lane change decisions
Improved performanec in parking lots
Improved performance at intersections and stops
Introduction of Speed Profile
Earlier and More Natural Lane Changes
First off, Tesla mentions earlier and more natural lane change decisions. We’ve seen this one pop up before, and it's definitely a pain point for Tesla. Even today on FSD V12.5.4, FSD will still sometimes make lane change decisions within less than 200 feet of a turn, moving you from the far right to the left turning lane in a short space.
Addressing this will greatly help how smooth FSD will feel.
Improved Performance in Parking Lots
Tesla also mentions improved parking lot performance as coming soon. This particular enhancement to FSD will likely help improve Actually Smart Summon so that it can expand beyond FSD-specific updates and become available to more users. This will allow users with Enhanced Autopilot and owners outside of North America to gain access to Actually Smart Summon for the first time. Currently, Actually Smart Summon is available to users in North America with 2024.27.25.
In addition, we’re expecting Banish – also known as Reverse Summon – to rely upon these improvements. Banish will allow your vehicle to drop you off at an entrance to a location, and then find a parking stall, and park itself. This is going to be another key item for Robotaxi and Unsupervised FSD and is one of the items we’re the most excited about.
Improved Performance at Intersections and Stops
FSD V12.5 brought along some oddities regarding intersections. Owners have been reporting FSD stopping for green lights or double braking on stop signs. This feature is likely to target some of these existing issues.
While FSD V12.5 also brought pretty drastic improvements for roundabouts, there are still some issues with signalling and lane selection in multi-lane roundabouts, so maybe they’ll address those here as well. This is a pretty broad category, so we can only imagine what they’ll be doing here.
Introduction of Speed Profile
We previously reported that Elon Musk wanted to add a new FSD drive mode. It appears that FSD’s Assertive Mode will become “Hurry Mode.” However, based on the release notes, Tesla seems to imply that it may not be called Hurry Mode but instead Speed Mode. This mode will likely be an option that tells FSD to go a bit faster and also become more aggressive with overtaking – something that has become more common and much smoother with FSD V12.5. This is going to be an interesting addition or change, and we’ll be sure to dig into it more in the future when it becomes available.
Release Date
Tesla’s Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy posted on X that while the Cybertruck is receiving FSD 12.5.5 with the end-to-end highway stack, don’t expect it to roll out to other vehicles immediately. Tesla prioritized getting this out for the Cybertruck and they’re still working on getting the highway stack ready for other vehicles. Ashok said that he expects Tesla to have an internal build ready in about a week or so. With Tesla’s robotaxi event just 10 days out, it sounds like this won’t arrive on customer vehicles until after the event.
Great job by the @Tesla_AI team on meeting the goals laid out for September🤩
End-to-end on the highway is first shipping to Cybertrucks. We are close to an early release build for remaining platforms and will release to internal employees in the next week or so.
Tesla has finally released Full Self-Driving for the Cybertruck to Tesla employees and Early Access Testers with update 2024.32.20. This update was sent to employees earlier today and has just gone out to early access testers. We received confirmation from an employee that the vehicle indeed has FSD enabled for the first time.
Tesla's Cybertruck has been without any ADAS software since its launch, and owners have been putting the distance on them anyway, driving manually. The only option currently available is TACC—or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control. TACC on the Cybertruck Foundation Series does come with traffic controls enabled, so it will slow and stop for stop signs, red lights, and pedestrian crossings.
Cybertruck FSD
With no FSD or Autosteer, many owners have been disappointed that one of the main things they paid for in the Foundation Series package has been unavailable to date. Tesla announced in their FSD roadmap that the Cybertruck would receive FSD in September 2024. The Cybertruck did receive Autopark and Park Assist recently, but there was no indication that it would receive FSD until just now.
With this employee, we’ve confirmed that their vehicle is on update 2024.32.20 and that their release notes are watermarked as Tesla continues to crack down on leaks.
Tesla doesn’t allow employee vehicles to have 3rd-party connections, but with the update going out to early access testers, we now have access to the release notes for the update. This update also includes support for sunglasses with attention monitoring, which was introduced in FSD 12.5.4, and the brand-new end-to-end for highway driving that’s new in this update.
When Will It Arrive?
We expect FSD for Cybertruck to hit other customers soon now that it's on the wider set of early-access vehicles. However, Tesla did add this to the release notes, which may point to a longer wait:
“Note: This is an early access build. You and anyone you authorize must use additional caution and remain attentive. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent.”
We hope it won’t take more than a week or two for it to reach other Foundation-Series Cybertruck owners. Cybertruck’s software update cadence has been faster than Tesla’s usual pipeline, so hopefully, the wait won’t be long.
Since this build is now based on update 2024.32, we expect the next FSD update for all vehicles to also be on update 2024.32 and introduce the 2024.32 Tesla features to everyone on the FSD track.
![Tesla Launches FSD for the Cybertruck With Update 2024.32.20 (FSD 12.5.5) [VIDEO]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/img/containers/article_images/tesla-screen/cybertruck-full-screen.jpg/20136002e8c6c2b1ecc74a27e07a9602/cybertruck-full-screen.jpg)
