A green dot appearing on the screen when the camera is monitoring
Whole Mars Catalog
Tesla has rolled out FSD V12.4.1 to its employees today. FSD V12.4.1 is expected to introduce significant improvements to FSD and a batch of new features. The deployment, version 2024.15.5, will soon be available to nearly all vehicles in the fleet, bringing together FSD and non-FSD branches and beginning the elimination of steering wheel nags.
Update: Slightly ahead of Musk’s estimate, Tesla started rolling out FSD 12.4.1 to a small group of owners late last night. Musk had estimated this latest update would start rolling out this weekend to a small batch of customers after going out to employees on Thursday.
One change in this update is the green dot that appears on the screen (shown in the image above), when the cabin camera is actively checking for driver attention. If no additional bugs are found, we may see 12.4.1 roll out to additional customers later this weekend. Follow our roll out page to keep an eye on further releases.
Includes Spring Update Features
Tesla has introduced FSD V12.4.1 on branch 2024.15.5 – which means that vehicles on 2024.3.25, 2024.8.9, and 2024.14.11 and below will be eligible for the update! This is good news, as the majority of the tracked fleet will be eligible.
Users on 2024.3.25 and 2024.8.9 will also be receiving all the features from the Spring Update, including the updated UI and all the other features. This is going to be a major update.
Elon Musk has previously mentioned that FSD V12.4 will bring the fractured FSD and non-FSD branches together, and this looks like it will come true shortly.
Green Dot When Monitoring
With this update, FSD will primarily rely upon the camera driver monitoring system (DMS) to determine whether the driver is paying attention. Of course, this is the initial implementation and has a few limitations. While the cabin camera is monitoring the driver, Tesla will now display a green dot on the screen to let the driver know the camera is active. This is similar to how phones show a green dot when one of the cameras is on.
Driver Monitoring
The cabin camera cannot be occluded or obscured, and it must have continuous visibility of the driver’s eyes to eliminate the steering wheel nag. This means that there must be sufficient cabin illumination, the driver cannot be wearing sunglasses or a low-brim hat, and nothing is preventing the camera from seeing the driver’s eyes. Legacy vehicles without a camera are expected to remain with the steering wheel method of detecting attention.
At this point, regular eyeglasses should not impact the use of the improved DMS – but looking away for extended periods will trigger a warning. Continuous inattention will escalate warnings, and eventually lead to a strikeout.
With this update, drivers will not receive requests for steering wheel nags while the updated DMS is confident that they are paying attention and fulfilling all the conditions.
FSD V12.4.1 Improvements
Besides the elimination of the steering wheel nag, Tesla will be adding quite a few other features to FSD V12.4.1, including an updated Strikeout and Suspension system.
You can receive up to 5 strikeouts before being suspended for a week. Good driving behavior (without a strikeout) will result in a strikeout being removed, once per 7 days.
Musk also mentioned previously that Banish Autopark and Park Seek would be arriving with 12.4, but the release notes for this version don’t mention this. These don’t seem to have arrived just yet, but they could still be coming soon in a V12.4.X update.
Expected Release Date
Given Tesla’s rate of updates and the recent positive news on FSD V12.4.1 from both Elon Musk and testers, we could expect the first customers to start receiving V12.4.1 by this weekend or early next week.
Shortly after the announcement of Rivian and Volkswagen’s joint venture, Rivian hosted a short, impromptu investor call to discuss a few key items. If you want to listen to the call yourself, you’ll need to provide a few short pieces of information at this link. The day after, on the 27th of June, Rivian held its Investor Day.
Let’s dive into all the awesome stuff that was unveiled by Rivian during the call and during Investor Day itself.
Volkswagen Investment
The first item on the list was of course the announcement of the joint venture with Volkswagen. The call confirmed that VW will be providing that $1B initial investment, alongside the $4B planned for 2025 and onwards.
Rivian has said that it intends to use this investment to focus on the Rivian R2 ramp at its Normal, Illinois factory, as well as develop its upcoming facility in Georgia. They also confirmed that they will be providing software and ECU (electronic control units) hardware for Volkswagen EVs going forward, which will be based on the R2 or R3 platforms.
The companies will be sharing the responsibility of the joint venture corporation, and Rivian and Volkswagen will each appoint one co-CEO. If you’re interested in the details of how the Joint Venture and the investment work, we highly recommend you listen to the call.
New Vehicles, New Platforms
Rivian also showed off a slide quite similar to Tesla’s slide at its Shareholder Meeting – with 5 vehicles under the wraps. Of note is the updated R1 Gen 2 platform has a new vehicle, which looks similar to the R1S Suburban Edition that has been previously teased. The R2/R3 platform also has a smaller vehicle in its lineup, which looks similar to a wagon or hot hatch. Finally, the “Affordable Mass Market” platform has a full-size SUV, as well as a smaller SUV and what could be a sedan.
All in all, Rivian has some exciting news to look forward to, with the Joint Venture serving as both a lifeline and an opportunity for Rivian to push towards more affordable mass-market vehicles, which will help cement them as an affordable EV brand.
Rivian's Investor Day Slide
Not a Tesla App
New Battery Pack and Bi-Directional Charging
Another major update for Rivian’s platforms – including the Gen 2 R1 series and R2/R3 platform, is an updated battery pack. This updated pack is structural – and has greatly reduced the cost of the structural components by approximately 50%, which is a massive improvement. Rivian will be using 4695 cells in their updated pack, similar to Tesla’s 4680 cells. These cell sizes are easier and cheaper to manufacture but cooling them has been difficult – even for Tesla. This difficulty in cooling has resulted in reduced maximum charge rates, but Tesla has recently had some drastic improvements in this field.
Every Rivian vehicle already supports the V2H/V2L vehicle-to-home/vehicle-to-load protocols from CCS, but it has thus far been disabled. Rivian will be introducing a bidirectional charger for V2H, alongside a software update to unlock the functionality on all previous Rivian vehicles.
Electronics and the Maximus Motor
A key portion of Volkswagen’s investment is also access to Rivian’s new electronics – the Zonal controllers. Rivian has built a zone-based ECU that controls various parts of the vehicle in centralized locations – resulting in their Gen 2 platform having 60% fewer ECUs, a 1.6-mile reduction in cable harness length, and a 44lb weight reduction.
These are some pretty impressive numbers and are a great step towards Rivian moving towards scaling mass production of their vehicle platforms.
Of course, it's not just the battery and electronics – Rivian’s in-house motor has received an update, with a 30% cost savings and a 30% reduction in labor per unit for their single-motor-per-axel motor variant. This motor will be going onwards to replace the Enduro and will be the primary drive unit for the R2 and R3 vehicles.
Rivian Spaces, Shop, and the Rivian Adventure Network
Rivian’s sales fronts are known as Rivian Spaces – genuinely a place to get to see a vehicle, hear about it from a Rivian salesperson, and learn about all its features. Spaces have generally been sparsely located – with just 12 open today in 2024, and just 2 open last year.
To address this, Rivian plans a drastic expansion of its Spaces, with 40+ being opened throughout 2024 and 2025. This is going to be Rivian’s big step towards bringing their vehicles to the mass market, and away from the specialty consumers that they target today.
The Rivian Shop will also be receiving plenty of updates – alongside the newly launched shop UI. This will include a dedicated platform for selling pre-owned Rivians, including lease returns.
Beyond the expansion of Spaces, Rivian currently has 59 service centers open today and aims to have 100+ service centers through 2025. This is a pretty big increase, and Rivian also mentions that it intends to have Rivian Mobile Service be able to reach customers who aren’t near a Service Center.
They intend for their service centers to remain fairly small, with roughly a 50% smaller footprint than other comparables, as approximately 70% of their work orders are completed via mobile service. This is fairly similar to Tesla’s approach with their large-footprint Collision Centers located centrally, and smaller Service Center/Delivery Center combinations spread throughout major cities. Tesla has previously mentioned that approximately 80% of their service orders can be completed by a mobile technician, and Rivian is very similar.
Rivian plans to introduce an AI chat system that can pull vehicle logs and data, as well as known defects to help assist Rivian owners and customers with service requests before they need to speak to an agent. The AI will be able to schedule service appointments, and can even suggest routine maintenance, such as tire rotations. This service will be arriving for Rivian’s commercial vehicle platforms first – the EDV and ECV.
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.
Update: As expected, the release notes remain the same as FSD v12.4.2 and this update just includes bug fixes.
Update 2: In the past hour, early-access customers (“OG testers”) have started receiving this update. This is the first time FSD 12.4.3 has gone out to the public. These owners were previously on FSD 12.4.2, which also didn’t go into a wide release. Given how fast this update went to employees and then to OG testers, Tesla must be testing a specific issue that quickly passed testing. We could see this version expand to additional customers later this weekend or early next week.
Update 3: Tesla has now expanded the rollout to more customers. It has now gone beyond the “OG” testers and to many regular customers. You can follow the progress of the rollout on our statistics page for FSD 12.4.3. This appears to be the version that will go wide to everyone that’s still on a 2024.14 update.
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.
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