How to Enjoy Your One Month Free Trial of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD), Including Current Subscribers

April 1, 2024

By Kevin Armstrong

FSD Free Trial Rolls Out

Not a Tesla App

Tesla is rolling out an exciting opportunity for its customers in the United States and Canada to experience the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature for one month, free of charge. Yes, it is called Supervised now and not Beta; read more about that change here.

Tesla owners in the US and Canada can enjoy a free month of FSD (Supervised), provided their vehicles are equipped with either software update version 2024.3.6 or 2024.3.10 which is now rolling out to the masses in North America. This initiative is part of Tesla's effort to introduce users to the advancements in autonomous driving technology, specifically the enhancements in the FSD v12 upgrades.

Recognizing Your Eligibility

Eligibility is straightforward. If you currently do not subscribe to FSD, Tesla will email you to notify you of the free one-month trial offer. Keep an eye on your inbox for an email from Tesla. To be in line for the update and the trial, you need to:

Reside in the US or Canada.
Have installed Tesla update 2024.3.6 or update 2024.3.10

If you’re running Tesla update 2024.2.x or older, then you’ll be eligible to download this latest FSD update. Tesla will automatically push the update to your vehicle when it's your turn. The rollout is happening in substantial batches, so patience is key. For more detailed information on the updates, head to our Tesla's software updates page, which offers comprehensive release notes.

Already a Subscriber?

According to X user David Lindsey, if you currently subscribe to FSD, then you’ll also receive a free month of FSD. In his screenshot, he shows that he has been billed for previous months, but his next charge isn’t until May 11th, completely skipping the April 11th charge.

However, if you purchased FSD for a hefty sum, Tesla isn’t being quite as generous, and there won’t be a credit in your account. While this isn’t surprising, it would be a nice gesture to reward owners who bought FSD with some referral credits, or something similar.

Legacy Model S and Model X Owners

Legacy Model S and Model X vehicles have so far been left without FSD v12 access. However, according to Tesla executive Rohan Patel, an update is on the horizon for these vehicles before the redesign in 2021. These vehicles which account for about 3% of all FSD-eligible vehicles, have distinct hardware and need further training and testing before FSD v12 becomes available. Although Patel stood clear of providing an estimate of when a build would be ready, he confirmed that Tesla's AI team is diligently working to ensure compatibility and safety.

How to Start Your Trial

Once you've received the trial notification over email, there’s no need to subscribe to FSD or activate it in any manner. FSD will instantly become available in your vehicle. Unfortunately for some owners who may be away for work or vacation, you can not postpone the trial and it begins immediately.

Although Tesla has moved away from the FSD Beta wording and it’s now officially called FSD (Supervised), always remember that this feature requires you to be constantly aware of your surroundings and to monitor the vehicle closely. While FSD will navigate, change lanes, and even take turns, it's imperative to stay attentive and cautious—the system is designed to assist, not replace, the driver.

The Full Self-Driving (Supervised) upgrade represents a significant leap forward, transitioning the city-streets driving stack to a single, end-to-end neural network. This evolution from explicit coding to neural-based learning aims to enhance your driving experience significantly.

Tesla's offer of a one-month free FSD trial marks the first time Tesla has offered FSD as a trial. Tesla has previously offered trials for Enhance Autopilot, but not for FSD. Tesla hopes that giving customers this unique opportunity to try out FSD will lead to additional FSD subscriptions, which may help boost Tesla’s expected weaker sales this quarter.

Check for updates in your vehicle or app, check your emails, and your Tesla vehicle may be next.

Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Not a Tesla App

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

Not a Tesla App

One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.