Recently, quite a few employees and internal testers have leaked images of Tesla’s release notes. Tesla prefers to keep its software releases and release notes closely held, and they’re now taking some steps by watermarking release notes to prevent further leaks.
Watermarks
In-vehicle release notes will now be watermarked with vehicle VINs. This will prevent quick and simple photos of the release notes from being leaked easily. The presence of a VIN watermark means that an employee or tester who shares an image can be quickly and easily identified and then removed from the testing program.
Tesla is also watermarking the release notes in the Tesla app in addition to the ones in the vehicle.
Tesla is hoping that this will reduce information sharing and prevent leaks. However, there are several ways around this that will likely be used going forward – expect images to be edited after being taken to remove or blur out the VINs, or for the notes to be fully transcribed into text.
Wave 1 Employees
Tesla’s Wave 1 employees receive updates several weeks before they go out to the general public. Wave 1 employees serve as an additional internal testing step, and benefit from the employee perk of early access to new features and improvements. This lets Tesla give its employees a tangible benefit, while also allowing it to test outside its dedicated quality assurance group of employees and vehicles.
This is a pretty crucial role – Wave 1 employees act as a safeguard against buggy updates. By catching potential issues with various vehicle hardware combinations or edge cases here, Tesla can nip these problems in the bud. For instance, the 2024.20 update has already had a revision – 2024.20.1, before starting to go out to Tesla owners. FSD V12.4 is the same – V12.4.1 is likely the version that will be going out to owners.
This is a safety-conscious approach that lets Tesla test for bugs across its widely varied hardware and rectify any bugs as they’re caught by employees. Once no major issues are found in the wave 1 group, either by employee reporting or by automatic bug reports, the update then gradually starts to roll out to the public in small numbers.
Tesla has issued an OTA recall for the Cybertruck – unsurprisingly, one that has already been fixed for customer vehicles. We’ll expand on the recall a little later, but more importantly, the recall filing revealed that Tesla has now built and sold 27,185 Foundation-Series Cybertrucks for customers.
OTA Recall
The OTA recall – which was issued in update 2024.32.5.2 and above, covered an issue that could delay the rearview camera being displayed on the dashboard.
This would occur if the Cybertruck was powered on, and then quickly shifted to reverse. The rearview camera would not come up on screen within the prescribed 2-second timeframe.
According to the NHTSA filing, Tesla has already fixed this via the OTA update, and the rearview camera will now display within that 2-second timeframe as required going forward. This was another easy OTA fix for Tesla.
Not a Tesla App
27k Cybertrucks
The filing also revealed that Tesla has produced and delivered approximately 27 thousand Foundation-Series Cybertrucks through September 14th. Tesla has been producing the Cybertruck for approximately 11 months now, with the 12-month anniversary coming up on November 13th.
Elon Musk previously mentioned that Tesla intends to produce approximately 375,000 trucks per year to compete with the ICE pickup market. Today, Tesla produces 1.7 million Model 3 and Model Y vehicles per year, and about 80,000 Model S and Model X vehicles a year.
Overall, that 27 thousand over a year is only the start of production, and as Tesla expands and improves its production lines, we can expect that number to continue growing at a rapid pace. With the Foundation Series ending and Tesla opening up invites for reservation holders to configure their non-FS Cybertruck, that number is only expected to increase. The non-FS Cybertruck is priced at $79,990, $20k less than the Foundation Series. The Cybertruck will also become eligible for the Canadian iZEV Heavy EV Rebate.
This puts the Cybertruck in an excellent spot in the future—and it has already outsold its EV competitors in the same market. We’re looking forward to seeing how fast Tesla meets the upcoming demand for non-Foundation Series Cybertrucks.
Tesla has released software update 2024.38 to its employees for its last round of internal testing. We now have preliminary release notes for this update.
It looks like this update will be smaller and focus on two main changes. However, keep in mind that there could be additional features that may only apply to certain regions or vehicles that are not mentioned here.
The two features are the ability to use Spotify with a free Spotify account (still requiring Premium Connectivity), and improvements to the vehicle’s side mirror functions.
We’ve recently been able to confirm these changes with an employee.
Spotify
Since Premium Connectivity’s free Spotify Premium (for Europeans only) is going the way of the dodo, it looks like Tesla and Spotify will now allow you to log in to your Spotify account with a free account, at least in Europe and Australia. Tesla also recently announced that vehicles in North America that use the “Streaming” app will now be changed to a free version of Slacker that will include ads and other limitations.
If the ability to use Spotify for free is limited to Europe and Australia, where these users already had free access to Spotify Premium, then this isn’t a huge deal. However, if Tesla and Spotify now allow you to stream Spotify in your vehicle with a free account, that will be a huge win for many owners. The free version of Spotify has limited skips and includes ads. Other music services require you to have a premium or paid subscription before allowing you to stream in the vehicle. In either case, you’ll still need Tesla’s Premium Connectivity plan to stream music over the vehicle’s connection, or you could use your phone’s hotspot feature.
Side Mirrors
The side mirrors are finally getting some additional customization options with two improvements.
First, you will now be able to customize the side mirror’s tilt when reversing. By default, a Tesla’s side mirrors will angle downwards while reversing to provide a better perspective of what’s close to the edges of your vehicle, rather than your blind spots. You’ll now be able to customize the level of tilt when this happens. To adjust the tilt angle, go to Controls > Mirrors > Adjust Tilt Position.
This will help folks who are either taller or shorter than the norm – you’ll now be able to customize the angles to better suit you. It’s a simple update, but a much-appreciated one!
Next up for the side mirrors – you’ll be able to fold them in the quick menu. That’s the menu that pops up when you press and hold down the left scroll wheel. You’ll also be able to unfold them from the quick menu as well.
Other Updates
Similar to other recent updates, Tesla now has an Other Updates section where they list smaller features that don’t warrant their own release notes.
In this section, Tesla outlines four improvements, although only two are noteworthy. One of them is the ability to manually fold the side mirrors using the quick function that we talked about above and the other is improvements to the WiFi menu. The four points Tesla mentions in their release notes are:
- The Wi-Fi menu provides more information about your Wi-Fi connection as well as tips for improving your connection.
- Hold down the left scroll wheel and select Fold Mirrors to fold the mirrors in or out.
- This update contains important security fixes and improvements
- This version contains minor fixes and improvements
This update is expected to start rolling out to users in the next week or two, so it won’t take long now before we have the full release notes for this update available.
