Tesla FSD V12.5.5 Adds End-to-End Highway Stack; Tesla Teases Upcoming Features

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Tesla has launched FSD V12.5.5 with update 2024.32.20, which has just hit early access testers. This update includes several new things, including the new end-to-end highway stack and bringing FSD to the Cybertruck for the first time. Tesla also outlined additional features to expect in future revisions of FSD.

The End-to-End part of the stack means that rather than hand-coding all the decision-making directly into FSD, Tesla now relies upon AI, trained upon hundreds of thousands of hours of footage gathered by its fleet, to make decisions.

This is key to rapid improvements and will help to bring Unsupervised FSD – and Robotaxi – to realization. We’re especially excited to see these improvements with the Robotaxi event just around the corner.

End-to-End Highway Stack

FSD V12 brought the End-to-End stack to City Streets, and the Highway Stack was still running FSD V11. With this update, end-to-end AI will now be used on the highway, which should be a considerable improvement.

When End-to-End was introduced on city streets, it brought some drastic improvements in how FSD was handled between V11.4.9 and V12.3.6. There’s likely going to be a similar level of improvement between FSD V12.5.4 on the highway and FSD V12.5.5 on the highway.

As of today, FSD still tends to sit in the left lane, Auto-Speed doesn’t function on the highway, and the speed limit can change drastically where it's incorrectly mapped.

With the end-to-end highway stack, we could see FSD correctly use the left lane to overtake vehicles and then come back into the middle or right lane, as required. In addition, we could see Tesla add Auto-Speed functionality for the highway so that the vehicle is able to more fluidly respond to changes in traffic and speed more naturally.

Upcoming Improvements

In the release notes for FSD 12.5.5, Tesla also updated the list of features coming in future FSD versions, some of which Tesla hadn’t previously discussed or mentioned in the FSD Roadmap. In Tesla’s release notes, they specifically mention these upcoming improvements:

• Earlier and more natural lane change decisions

• Improved performanec in parking lots

• Improved performance at intersections and stops

• Introduction of Speed Profile

Earlier and More Natural Lane Changes

First off, Tesla mentions earlier and more natural lane change decisions. We’ve seen this one pop up before, and it's definitely a pain point for Tesla. Even today on FSD V12.5.4, FSD will still sometimes make lane change decisions within less than 200 feet of a turn, moving you from the far right to the left turning lane in a short space.

Addressing this will greatly help how smooth FSD will feel.

Improved Performance in Parking Lots

Tesla also mentions improved parking lot performance as coming soon. This particular enhancement to FSD will likely help improve Actually Smart Summon so that it can expand beyond FSD-specific updates and become available to more users. This will allow users with Enhanced Autopilot and owners outside of North America to gain access to Actually Smart Summon for the first time. Currently, Actually Smart Summon is available to users in North America with 2024.27.25.

In addition, we’re expecting Banish – also known as Reverse Summon – to rely upon these improvements. Banish will allow your vehicle to drop you off at an entrance to a location, and then find a parking stall, and park itself. This is going to be another key item for Robotaxi and Unsupervised FSD and is one of the items we’re the most excited about.

Improved Performance at Intersections and Stops

FSD V12.5 brought along some oddities regarding intersections. Owners have been reporting FSD stopping for green lights or double braking on stop signs. This feature is likely to target some of these existing issues.

While FSD V12.5 also brought pretty drastic improvements for roundabouts, there are still some issues with signalling and lane selection in multi-lane roundabouts, so maybe they’ll address those here as well. This is a pretty broad category, so we can only imagine what they’ll be doing here.

Introduction of Speed Profile

We previously reported that Elon Musk wanted to add a new FSD drive mode. It appears that FSD’s Assertive Mode will become “Hurry Mode.” However, based on the release notes, Tesla seems to imply that it may not be called Hurry Mode but instead Speed Mode. This mode will likely be an option that tells FSD to go a bit faster and also become more aggressive with overtaking – something that has become more common and much smoother with FSD V12.5. This is going to be an interesting addition or change, and we’ll be sure to dig into it more in the future when it becomes available.

Release Date

Tesla’s Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy posted on X that while the Cybertruck is receiving FSD 12.5.5 with the end-to-end highway stack, don’t expect it to roll out to other vehicles immediately. Tesla prioritized getting this out for the Cybertruck and they’re still working on getting the highway stack ready for other vehicles. Ashok said that he expects Tesla to have an internal build ready in about a week or so. With Tesla’s robotaxi event just 10 days out, it sounds like this won’t arrive on customer vehicles until after the event.

Great job by the @Tesla_AI team on meeting the goals laid out for September🤩

End-to-end on the highway is first shipping to Cybertrucks. We are close to an early release build for remaining platforms and will release to internal employees in the next week or so.

— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 30, 2024

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Tesla Launches FSD for the Cybertruck With Update 2024.32.20 (FSD 12.5.5) [VIDEO]

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Tesla has finally released Full Self-Driving for the Cybertruck to Tesla employees and Early Access Testers with update 2024.32.20. This update was sent to employees earlier today and has just gone out to early access testers. We received confirmation from an employee that the vehicle indeed has FSD enabled for the first time.

Tesla's Cybertruck has been without any ADAS software since its launch, and owners have been putting the distance on them anyway, driving manually. The only option currently available is TACC—or Traffic-Aware Cruise Control. TACC on the Cybertruck Foundation Series does come with traffic controls enabled, so it will slow and stop for stop signs, red lights, and pedestrian crossings.

Cybertruck FSD

With no FSD or Autosteer, many owners have been disappointed that one of the main things they paid for in the Foundation Series package has been unavailable to date. Tesla announced in their FSD roadmap that the Cybertruck would receive FSD in September 2024. The Cybertruck did receive Autopark and Park Assist recently, but there was no indication that it would receive FSD until just now.

With this employee, we’ve confirmed that their vehicle is on update 2024.32.20 and that their release notes are watermarked as Tesla continues to crack down on leaks.

Tesla doesn’t allow employee vehicles to have 3^rd-party connections, but with the update going out to early access testers, we now have access to the release notes for the update. This update also includes support for sunglasses with attention monitoring, which was introduced in FSD 12.5.4, and the brand-new end-to-end for highway driving that’s new in this update.

When Will It Arrive?

We expect FSD for Cybertruck to hit other customers soon now that it's on the wider set of early-access vehicles. However, Tesla did add this to the release notes, which may point to a longer wait:

“Note: This is an early access build. You and anyone you authorize must use additional caution and remain attentive. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent.”

We hope it won’t take more than a week or two for it to reach other Foundation-Series Cybertruck owners. Cybertruck’s software update cadence has been faster than Tesla’s usual pipeline, so hopefully, the wait won’t be long.

Since this build is now based on update 2024.32, we expect the next FSD update for all vehicles to also be on update 2024.32 and introduce the 2024.32 Tesla features to everyone on the FSD track.

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Is Tesla Removing Free Music Streaming (Streaming in North America and Spotify in Europe)?

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Tesla currently offers free music streaming with every Tesla, although you’ll need Tesla’s Premium Connectivity package to stream over the vehicle’s cellular data or be on WiFi. In North America, Tesla includes what they used to call “Streaming,” and have just recently renamed to call LiveOne. However, in Europe, where LiveOne isn’t available, Tesla provides a free license for Spotify, which allows owners to stream the service for free without having to subscribe.

However, it looks like this may be coming to an end. We recently received an anonymous tip that Tesla would be ending this free benefit for its European customers. While we haven’t been able to confirm this just yet, it does seem likely. Let’s take a look at why we think this could be happening.

European Spotify Premium

Tesla’s European customers receive a free license of Spotify Premium right now – whether they’re subscribed to Spotify Premium or not. This means customers can listen to ad-free music, have unlimited skips, play music in any order, and be able to sort and queue songs for listening. However, the account is limited to listening in your Tesla, much like LiveOne in North America.

You’re also not given the credentials to the Spotify account, preventing you from using the same account on other devices. If a customer decides to subscribe to Spotify Premium on their own, they can still log in to their account in their Tesla and share the same Spotify account and playlists with other devices, just like you can in other regions.

Removal of Free Premium Benefits

Given the tip we received and some other recent information, we expect this change to happen. This appears in line with other changes to Tesla’s streaming services, including the changes to Slacker/LiveOne Radio in North America.

As Tesla adds additional music services like YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and SiriusXM in the future, it becomes more likely that Tesla vehicles have a music service someone may already subscribe to. This is especially true with the addition of Amazon Music, which is included with an Amazon Prime subscription. According to Statista, there are now over 180 million Amazon Prime members.

Subscribing to a music service has also become much more popular in recent years. In the United States alone, there are now more than 90 million music streaming subscriptions (Forbes), and that trend continues to grow year over year.

While Tesla likely only pays a small fraction of what a customer would pay for a Spotify Premium subscription, even if it’s just 50 cents per month, that amount would definitely add up with the more than 6 million Teslas on the road today.

Tesla certainly has the data to understand how many customers use the service that’s included in the vehicle and will use this to make the transition at the right time. At some point, it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay for a service most customers don’t use.

Timeline

We were told that this change would happen this year, so it may not be much longer before we hear about this change officially from Tesla. What’s not clear is whether this would impact all customers or potentially only new customers. A lot may depend on their deal with Spotify and LiveOne and whether it’s based on a flat fee per vehicle or a monthly/yearly fee.

Based on industry changes alone, we would expect this to impact all customers. However, we’ll have to wait for official confirmation from Tesla, as until then, this should be considered a rumor.

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