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

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
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.

First Look at Tesla’s New 'Blind Spot While Parked' Feature [VIDEO]

By Karan Singh
Automobile Propre

Tesla software update 2024.44.3 has started rolling out to customers in larger waves recently and it brings several new features - including Actually Smart Summon to Europe and the Middle East, as well as improvements to Autopark. But that’s not all, it also adds a new Blind Spot Monitoring feature to the new Model 3, and potentially the Cybertruck, but that’s still to be determined.

We previously covered the Blind Spot Warning While Parked as part of our preview notes for update 2024.44, but now that it's going out to customers, it's time to see it in action.

Blind Spot Monitoring While Parked

If the vehicle’s door open button is pressed, and a vehicle or object is near or incoming, the vehicle’s Blind Spot Warning Light (2024 Model 3 and Cybertruck) will illuminate, an audible tone will ring and the door won’t open. A message will also be displayed on the center displaying, letting driver’s know why the door didn’t open.

Pressing the button a second time will allow you to override the warning and open the door normally, providing a way to get out in case you just parked close to a nearby vehicle or obstacle.

The object detection for this new feature includes cars, pedestrians, cyclists, and other objects - like things including traffic cones, bollards, strollers, and other large obstacles that FSD and vision-based Autopark detect during normal operation. Of note - this only works for the front two doors. Thanks to X user Max, who did some testing for us, It does not work for the rear passenger doors.

Optional Feature

The feature is optional - it’ll be enabled by default for safety, but if you need to enable or disable it, you can do so under Controls > Safety. For now, the feature is only available on the 2024 Model 3, but we expect it to roll out to the Cybertruck at least. However, there’s no reason why it can’t be added to other vehicles as well, minus the small red dot. We expect Tesla to eventually add this feature to all Tesla vehicles, but it’s currently not a part of update 2024.44.

Enhauto’s S3XY Buttons & Commander

If that’s not enough safety and vision for you, Enhauto, the makers of the popular S3XY Buttons and Commander recently put out a new software update for the 2024 Model 3, which makes some fantastic use of the ambient lighting.

With Enhauto’s solution, users are able to tie their ambient lights to Autopilot use, turn signals or even if a vehicle is their blind spot. Check out the video below for this awesome implementation, where the ambient lights turn red when another vehicle approaches.

Maybe Tesla will integrate something like this into a future update? We’ve been hoping for more customizability with their ambient lighting - it's an easy safety win and a demonstration of Tesla’s do-more-with-less attitude.

Tesla Improves Trip Planner - Arrival State of Charge Coming

By Karan Singh
DBurkland/X

Tesla recently added the ability to report Supercharger issues - such as insufficient lighting, accessibility, cleanliness, and other things that can’t be automatically monitored. In response to the post on the official X Supercharger Community, Max de Zegher, Director of Charging, North America, confirmed that one of the most wish-listed features - Arrival State of Charge, is coming soon.

The feature is now possible thanks to what Wes Morrill, Cybertruck’s lead engineering, points out is a huge rewrite of Tesla’s Trip Planner, which not only makes it much more accurate but will now allow users to choose their arrival charge percentage.

More Accurate Trip Planner

When you navigate to a destination, your Tesla will automatically calculate when, where, and how much you need to charge. While the process seems straightforward, Tesla deserves a lot of credit for creating a simple user experience because a lot goes into accurately determining this information.

Tesla has to calculate many moving pieces in order to accurately predict when and where you should stop. First, it needs to consider your driving efficiency and wind direction, terrain elevation, traffic, vehicle speed, and ambient temperature. It also needs to predict the best Superchargers to stop at, taking into account congestion and charger speed.

This morning, in response to Dan Burkland, Wes shared that Tesla had significantly rewritten the backend portion of Trip Planner. These improvements, made by several engineers, were designed to improve Trip Planner’s accuracy and open the door to future features.

It sounds like these changes are mostly server-side, so thanks to their OTA connection, more accurate predictions should be available to all vehicles—no vehicle update is required.

Arrival State of Charge

Along with Tesla’s improvements to Trip Planner, Wes also stated that these improvements allow for a popular feature request — the ability to select your desired charge level at arrival.

Up until now, Tesla’s Trip Planner tried to get you to your destination as quickly as possible, which usually meant arriving with a low state of charge.

While this was fine if you have a charger at your destination, it’s not great if you don’t, or it could be even worse if there are no chargers nearby.

Max de Zegher said on X that he has heard the requests for a selectable arrival state of charge. Wes later clarified this by saying that these improvements to Tesla’s Trip Planner now allow for additional features to be added, such as “desired arrival charge.”

When Does it Arrive?

Given that Max de Zegher’s comments came last night and Wes Morrill commented this morning, this feature request likely won’t arrive with the upcoming Holiday Update. Tesla actually hinted at such a feature being added in their last app update, so it does seem like they’ve already planned for it.

Although ‘Arrival State of Charge’ was on our wishlist for the Holiday Update, it looks like it may arrive soon after the holidays.

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