Tesla is now in talks with the city of Palo Alto regarding the launch of its Robotaxi service in the city. According to Palo Alto Online, the city has already held a preliminary meeting with Tesla to discuss a potential partnership.
The city of Palo Alto has been looking for an alternative transport option for its citizens, as the free Palo Alto Shuttle ceased operations in 2020. Palo Alto currently has a rideshare carpool service called ‘Link,’ which offers citizens a cheaper alternative to Uber.
Advantages for Palo Alto
Robotaxi could offer the citizens of Palo Alto an excellent alternative means of transportation. They’d be able to summon their own Cybercab for their trip rather than waiting for a pooled form of transportation like Link.
The best part is that Robotaxi, with its extremely low cost per mile, is likely to also cost the residents less while also being more convenient and more widely available. This could be a massive advantage for its residents, who were previously relying on the free shuttle network and now use the fairly inexpensive but somewhat inconvenient Link service.
Robotaxi Testing Grounds
This deal with Palo Alto could represent an excellent opportunity for Tesla to gather additional data and start testing their autonomous taxi service. However, the City of Palo Alto confirmed that “the potential Tesla deal won’t be realized for some time because of regulatory hurdles.” Tesla will need to work with two California bodies to get this off the ground.
Before this Palo Alto plan can get off the ground, the Robotaxi service will have to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, and the Cybercab will also have to be approved by the California Department of Motor Vehicles before it can be used. Once regulatory approval is granted, Tesla will likely begin working in earnest to get their Robotaxis off the ground.
During its Robotaxi event, Tesla announced that it plans to start its Robotaxi service with Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in 2025, with the Cybercab entering the picture in late 2026. It’s not clear whether this potential deal keeps this timeline on track or helps expedite it.
Getting the Robotaxi service off the ground in a small location will be an excellent opportunity for Tesla to refine the overall experience, from the Robotaxi app, which is expected to be a separate riding-sharing app, to the user interface in the Robotaxi.
Tesla will also need to continue developing its automated charging and cleaning hubs, which will undoubtedly need to be refined and adjusted as it gets tested in the real world.
The next two years will undoubtedly be very interesting years for Tesla, as they’ll be facing the biggest steps of regulatory approval for both Unsupervised FSD, as well as Robotaxi.
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Tesla software update 2024.44.3 has started rolling out to customers in larger waves recently and it brings several new features - including Actually Smart Summon to Europe and the Middle East, as well as improvements to Autopark. But that’s not all, it also adds a new Blind Spot Monitoring feature to the new Model 3, and potentially the Cybertruck, but that’s still to be determined.
We previously covered the Blind Spot Warning While Parked as part of our preview notes for update 2024.44, but now that it's going out to customers, it's time to see it in action.
If the vehicle’s door open button is pressed, and a vehicle or object is near or incoming, the vehicle’s Blind Spot Warning Light (2024 Model 3 and Cybertruck) will illuminate, an audible tone will ring and the door won’t open. A message will also be displayed on the center displaying, letting driver’s know why the door didn’t open.
Pressing the button a second time will allow you to override the warning and open the door normally, providing a way to get out in case you just parked close to a nearby vehicle or obstacle.
The object detection for this new feature includes cars, pedestrians, cyclists, and other objects - like things including traffic cones, bollards, strollers, and other large obstacles that FSD and vision-based Autopark detect during normal operation. Of note - this only works for the front two doors. Thanks to X user Max, who did some testing for us, It does not work for the rear passenger doors.
Optional Feature
The feature is optional - it’ll be enabled by default for safety, but if you need to enable or disable it, you can do so under Controls > Safety. For now, the feature is only available on the 2024 Model 3, but we expect it to roll out to the Cybertruck at least. However, there’s no reason why it can’t be added to other vehicles as well, minus the small red dot. We expect Tesla to eventually add this feature to all Tesla vehicles, but it’s currently not a part of update 2024.44.
Enhauto’s S3XY Buttons & Commander
If that’s not enough safety and vision for you, Enhauto, the makers of the popular S3XY Buttons and Commander recently put out a new software update for the 2024 Model 3, which makes some fantastic use of the ambient lighting.
With Enhauto’s solution, users are able to tie their ambient lights to Autopilot use, turn signals or even if a vehicle is their blind spot. Check out the video below for this awesome implementation, where the ambient lights turn red when another vehicle approaches.
Maybe Tesla will integrate something like this into a future update? We’ve been hoping for more customizability with their ambient lighting - it's an easy safety win and a demonstration of Tesla’s do-more-with-less attitude.
I look forward to @enhauto updates more than Tesla...
Ambient light effects....
I set default color to white. Blinks green on turn signals Turns blue on FSD activation Yellow if someone in blind spot Blinks red if turn signal on and blind spot activity detected.
The feature is now possible thanks to what Wes Morrill, Cybertruck’s lead engineering, points out is a huge rewrite of Tesla’s Trip Planner, which not only makes it much more accurate but will now allow users to choose their arrival charge percentage.
More Accurate Trip Planner
When you navigate to a destination, your Tesla will automatically calculate when, where, and how much you need to charge. While the process seems straightforward, Tesla deserves a lot of credit for creating a simple user experience because a lot goes into accurately determining this information.
Tesla has to calculate many moving pieces in order to accurately predict when and where you should stop. First, it needs to consider your driving efficiency and wind direction, terrain elevation, traffic, vehicle speed, and ambient temperature. It also needs to predict the best Superchargers to stop at, taking into account congestion and charger speed.
This morning, in response to Dan Burkland, Wes shared that Tesla had significantly rewritten the backend portion of Trip Planner. These improvements, made by several engineers, were designed to improve Trip Planner’s accuracy and open the door to future features.
It sounds like these changes are mostly server-side, so thanks to their OTA connection, more accurate predictions should be available to all vehicles—no vehicle update is required.
Arrival State of Charge
Along with Tesla’s improvements to Trip Planner, Wes also stated that these improvements allow for a popular feature request — the ability to select your desired charge level at arrival.
Up until now, Tesla’s Trip Planner tried to get you to your destination as quickly as possible, which usually meant arriving with a low state of charge.
While this was fine if you have a charger at your destination, it’s not great if you don’t, or it could be even worse if there are no chargers nearby.
Max de Zegher said on X that he has heard the requests for a selectable arrival state of charge. Wes later clarified this by saying that these improvements to Tesla’s Trip Planner now allow for additional features to be added, such as “desired arrival charge.”
Actually trip planner got a huge rewrite on the back end. I had a great conversation with one of the engineers working on this over a morning run a few weeks back, it's pretty neat. The rewrite also unlocks additional features, like desired arrival charge.
Given that Max de Zegher’s comments came last night and Wes Morrill commented this morning, this feature request likely won’t arrive with the upcoming Holiday Update. Tesla actually hinted at such a feature being added in their last app update, so it does seem like they’ve already planned for it.
Although ‘Arrival State of Charge’ was on our wishlist for the Holiday Update, it looks like it may arrive soon after the holidays.
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