Tesla's Robotaxi Event - We, Robot - Everything Announced

Sawyer Merrit on X

Did you miss Tesla’s biggest event since its inception? No worries, we have you covered.

We’ve got a straightforward and easy-to-digest recap below, split and organized by sections. Of course, we’ll dive into some of the bigger subjects in detail over the upcoming days, so stay tuned!

Event Info

• Tesla’s We, Robot event was centered on the future of autonomy

• 5 “neighbourhoods” were created

• Westworld offered Texas BBQ and the stage for the event

• Metropolis had arcade games, and the ability to take a swing at Cybertruck

• TSLA Theater had pizza and desserts, as well as a movie on a gigantic screen

• New York brought a block party with live music and street performers, as well as street snacks

• Finally, the last area was Merch – which, surprise – offered Tesla Merch, including gear, apparel, posters, and more

• Elon Musk arrived in style in a Robotaxi to kick off the event

Master Plan Part 4 Reference Poster

Jowua on X

General/Master Plan Part 4

• The event made multiple references to Master Plan Part 4, but we haven’t seen the official document yet

• Today’s transportation infrastructure is too expensive, not safe, and not sustainable

• 10 hours a week of use of consumer vehicles out of 168 hours a week

• Unsupervised Full Self Driving – Fall asleep and wake up at your destination

• Increased free time for humans

• Goal is to remove parking lots, as less will be needed in the future of autonomous vehicles

• Create green space in the cities we live in

AI Poster

Jowua on X

Robotaxi/Cybercab

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• The Cybercab has 2 doors, 2 seats, and is a 4-wheeler, as expected

• It has a front and rear lightbar, similar to Cybertruck

• Painted aluminum (not stainless steel)

• No rear or top glass

• No steering wheel or pedals

• Butterfly doors

• Large center screen

• Has large, hatch-like trunk

• 20 vehicles produced and ready at the event, with 30 additional Model Ys

• Autonomous vehicles will be 10x safer than humans

• Low cost for autonomous transit; $1/mi for buses, Cybercab around $0.2/mi ($0.4 after taxes and fees)

• Will be available for purchase

• Will cost below $30,000 USD

• One person will be able to take care of a small fleet easily

• Cybercab production begins before 2027

• Comes with inductive charging

• Tesla Social Media mentioned Fleet Management software

• Tesla showed off an automated cleaning system in the video, vacuuming the vehicle, wiping the seats and screens

• CyberCab will still be Vision-only, no need for radar or LiDAR

• Call it once, and its available for you all day, for either quick trips or long trips

Elon Musk Poster

Sawyer Merrit on X

RoboVan

• Tesla showed off a fully autonomous RoboVan with no front window

• Up to 20 people or can be set up for goods transport

• RoboVan has a Cyber aesthetic as well

• Large glass sliding doors

• Tesla seems to be going all-in on this aesthetic for its future vehicles

• RoboVan can be adapted to school bus or RV use

• RoboVan can also be adapted for personal use – this suggests it could be outfitted with a steering wheel and pedals

The CyberVan arriving

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AI and Hardware

• Unsupervised FSD in Texas and California in 2025, with Model 3 and Model Y

• Unsupervised FSD for S, X, and CT in the future

• AI has lived “a million lives” so it’s been trained on numerous odd situations

• Always pays attention and is always fully aware of its surroundings

• 10-30x safer than humans

• Focus on Tesla Vision – full autonomy, unsupervised for S, 3, X, Y, and CT

• Cybercab will have AI5, will have oversized compute compared to what’s required according to Musk

• Distributed inference compute brought up again

• No news on inductive charging for other vehicles

The Optimus Poster

Jowua on X

Optimus

• Optimus was brought out on stage again, walked with remote human assistance

• Attendees were allowed to interact with Optimus robots

• Optimus robots served drinks at the bar

• Expected to cost $20K-$30K USD

• Will eventually be an autonomous robotic assistant that can help with household tasks

• It can also be a humanoid friend, teacher, babysitter, etc.

• Elon mentioned the risks of AI Super Intelligence, and having to address it

• At the event, people could talk and interact with the Optimus units on the ground. Optimus movements were remotely assisted by humans. The robots voices also appear to have be humans that were in a remote location.

• Guests were not allowed to touch the Optimus units in the crowd

Another poster referencing Master Plan IV.

Jowua on X

If you missed the event, you can watch it below.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

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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.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

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.

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