Tesla Talks FSD: FSD V12 Rollout, Hardware 5, Miles Driven, Beta label and FSD Licensing

January 25, 2024

By Not a Tesla App Staff

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, Tesla held its 2023 Q4 earnings where they discussed the company's Q4 earnings and answered investor questions in a Q&A session.

Tesla discussed their next-gen vehicle, 4680 batteries, the Cybertruck and of course full self-driving.

FSD Beta v12 Roll Out

In November, we confirmed that Tesla rolled out FSD v12 to employees, and just last week it went out to some limited customers.

However, during Tesla's Q&A session, Tesla announced that FSD v12 would roll out to all customers in North America in "the weeks to come."

Musk, who answered the question, goes on to say that it will go out to the 400,000 cars who currently have access to FSD Beta in the U.S. and Canada. This number remains largely unchanged since Tesla first expanded FSD to everyone in North America who has bought or subscribed to the FSD.

FSD V12 Is Still In “Beta”

In Tesla's shareholder deck, Tesla confirms that v12 is end-to-end AI and calls the feature "FSD Beta software," confirming that FSD will remain in beta with the initial release of v12.

The shareholder deck states:

"In Q4, we released our latest FSD Beta software (V12) to select Tesla employees, and more recently, to customers. V12 utilizes end-to-end training, enhancing the driving experience. We also introduced the 2nd generation of the Optimus robot, which uses Tesla-designed actuators and sensors and improved AI capabilities. Both FSD Beta and Optimus are trained with similar technology pillars: real-world data, neural net training and cutting-edge hardware and software."

End of Separate Branches for FSD Beta?

Tesla has historically released new FSD Beta updates to a smaller, select group of testers, with the majority of vehicle owners remaining on the "production" code branch and keeping an older, but more stable version of FSD Beta.

With the holiday update, we saw the merger of FSD Beta updates and production releases, with everyone receiving a single holiday update (2023.44.30) that included FSD Beta 11.4.9. With the release of FSD v12, we expected the latest FSD Beta builds to once again diverge from the latest public releases.

However, Musk's comment on FSD v12's upcoming release to all customers makes it sound like this may not be the case. If Tesla is releasing FSD Beta v12 to all owners in North America in the coming weeks, it could be a part of Tesla update 2024.2, or a subsequent release.

Licensing FSD

Tesla previously talked about licensing FSD to other manufacturers. However, it looks like there hasn't been much progress on that front.

Michael questioned if there had been any progress on licensing FSD to another company.

Musk answers the question by saying there have been tentative conversations but ultimately revealed that there have been no deals yet.

FSD Hardware 5

Musk talked a little about Tesla's FSD hardware, saying Tesla continues to optimize software to get the most out of FSD hardware 3. However, more interestingly he revealed that Tesla is about to complete the design of Tesla hardware 5.

He didn't go into any other details on whether hardware 5 would simply have more compute power or additional hardware, but he said that Tesla is making gigantic improvements from hardware 3 to 4, to 5. Tesla released hardware 4 in March 2023, with additional compute power and higher-resolution cameras.

Musk also talked about a potentially interesting opportunity for Tesla to run "generalized AI tasks" on their vehicles when they're not in use.

Update on FSD Miles Driven

Tesla owners have driven about 725 million miles with FSD Beta

Not a Tesla App

While Tesla gave several updates on FSD during their Q&A session, they didn't touch on the amount of FSD miles driven during the actual call, but instead provided an update on their shareholder deck like they have in the past. Last quarter the chart revealed that there had been about 525 million miles driven on FSD Beta.

In this quarter's updated chart, Tesla shows that there have now been about 750 million miles driven since March 2021. That's an increase of about 225 million miles in three months.

Based on Tesla's 400,000 FSD Beta customers, some quick math reveals that each customer uses FSD Beta about 187 miles per month, or just higher than 6 miles per day.

The miles-driven chart trajectory has remained about the same since May 2023, which signifies that there hasn't been a major uptick in FSD Beta sales or its daily usage.

This will change when Tesla rolls FSD Beta out to additional markets, which may happen with China first. It'll also be interesting to see the impact of customer usage when Tesla rolls out FSD Beta v12.

Although Tesla didn't touch on the expansion of FSD Beta during the call, there were more details than usual this time around. Tesla provided updates on their next-gen vehicle, Optimus and the Cybertruck, among others.

Goldman Sachs evaluates Tesla's FSD as being worth $1 - $3 billion in revenue but reveals that this could balloon up to $10 to $75 billion in the next 6 years.

A lot of this may depend on Tesla's FSD success with end-to-end AI.

Musk Confirms Robotaxi on Track for June, More Cities Coming, Customer-owned Cars in 2026

April 1, 2025

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla signaled its intention to launch its first Robotaxi network in Austin, Texas, with company-owned and operated vehicles, back in January. This network will be Tesla’s first foray into truly autonomous vehicles - ones that aren’t being directly supervised by a driver. Later in February, Tesla’s executive team confirmed that the plans were on track for the launch of the Austin network both on X and during several interviews that they participated in.

At the end of February, we also found out that Tesla has applied for a Supervised Robotaxi license in California, where the network will also launch, but with safety drivers in place.

This is an ambitious plan, but FSD has really come a long way in the past year. FSD V12 was a massive step forward from V11, and V13 has made the experience smoother and safer than ever before. FSD V14 is expected to be another big step up with auto-regressive transformers and audio input.

Still on Track

Now, Elon has tripled down on the fact that Tesla will be launching their first autonomous robotaxi network in Austin - just two months away at this point. It seems that Tesla is fully set to launch their first fully unsupervised self-driving vehicles that will carry paying passengers in June.

Additional Cities

The best part is that Elon also confirmed that they’re targeting robotaxi networks launching in many cities within the United States by the end of this year. However, remember that this will be a Tesla-run network at first - Tesla owners won’t be able to add their vehicles to the Robotaxi fleet right away.

Adding Customer Vehicles

It will take some time before Tesla meets their strict internal safety requirements before it lets customers add their own vehicles to the network. Tesla’s executive team mentioned that they intend to let owners add their own vehicles to the fleet sometime in 2026. This happens to be the same time frame that Tesla plans to launch the Robotaxi across the United States, Mexico, and Canada — something that could only be done with customer-owned cars.

That final step will be bold—and it may come with complications, especially given that autonomous vehicle approval spans municipal, state or provincial, and even federal levels. There are plenty of regulatory hurdles ahead, but this is undoubtedly shaping up to be one of the most exciting times for Tesla.

Launch Event

With the Robotaxi network launching and Unsupervised FSD just around the corner, there’s a lot to get excited about. Tesla is expected to host a launch event at Gigafactory Texas in Austin to mark the debut of its first Robotaxi network. The company previously hinted that referral code users could receive invites—offering a rare chance to score an early ride in a Robotaxi outside the Hollywood studio lot.

Tesla Mule Model 3 Spotted With Front Bumper Camera

April 1, 2025

By Karan Singh

Ready_Medium_6693 on Reddit

Tesla’s engineering mule vehicles—used to test autonomy for future platforms—have resurfaced after an extended absence. The last time we saw them was back in July, when Tesla was gearing up for its initial We, Robot event. Since then, sightings have been scarce.

These vehicles typically signal that Tesla is testing new camera placements or validating FSD ground-truth data. This time, however, they appear to be outfitted exclusively with the updated camera hardware seen on the Cybercab.

New Sightings

The mules have now been spotted in Boston, Massachusetts, and Concord, New Hampshire—their first known appearances this far east. This suggests Tesla is actively collecting data to evaluate and optimize FSD performance in new regions. Thanks to Reddit user Ready_Medium_6693 for catching the one in Concord.

Elon Musk recently mentioned that Tesla plans to expand Robotaxi networks beyond the initial Texas and California launches. So while these sightings aren’t entirely unexpected, the speed of their arrival is. It suggests Tesla is confident in its ability to train FSD for local traffic rules and driving behaviors to the point it no longer needs a driver.

Bumper Cameras

The vehicle that’s been spotted in Boston is the usual Tesla engineering Model 3… except with one unique twist. It includes a front bumper camera. Shout out to @Dylan02939106 for catching the bumper camera in these photos.

The Refreshed Model 3 Mule with a Bumper Camera!

@Dylan02939106 on X

We previously released an opinion piece regarding whether the front bumper camera would be required for Unsupervised FSD. In our eyes, Tesla will require a bumper camera for Unsupervised FSD - if only to improve direct visibility in the bumper area of the vehicle. This is key for low-speed maneuvering in crowded areas like parking lots and garages, as well as for key features like Actually Smart Summon.

It isn’t surprising that Tesla is continuing to evaluate vehicles with a bumper camera - the Cybertruck, Cybercab, and Refreshed Model Y all have them now - and the rest of the lineup, including the flagship Model S and X, as well as the refreshed Model 3 - were supposed to eventually receive them as well.

With the Model S and Model X set for refreshes this year—and the front bumper camera on this Model 3 looking well-integrated rather than a temporary setup—it seems likely that front bumper cameras will soon become standard across Tesla’s entire lineup.

The Robotaxi Mule in Boston

@Dylan02939106 on X

In fact, Tesla’s newest iteration of the FSD computer has a slot for the Bumper Camera on all AI4/HW4 vehicles, so a future retrofit could even be possible.

These are some pretty exciting times - we may see Robotaxi networks actually deploy in time for Tesla’s lofty goal of “sometime in 2026” for cities throughout North America. Once many American cities begin to accept their deployment, it will be easier to seek homologation in Mexico and Canada, enabling deployment throughout the continent.