Tesla’s Updates FSD Roadmap: Talks FSD V13 and End-to-End Highway

@BLKMDL3

Last month Tesla shared a roadmap with its progress on FSD and its goals for the coming months. Since we’re coming to the end of October and Tesla had yet to release the two items listed under October, we asked Tesla if they could provide an updated roadmap to help keep everyone’s expectations in line.

We’re not sure whether Tesla saw our message or already had plans to provide an updated roadmap, but today Tesla published an update to its initial roadmap.

Instead of focusing on timelines, Tesla has now simply published what their AI team is working on and what customers could expect next.

Tesla’s Original Timeline

The roadmap Tesla provided in early September focused on FSD improvements, releasing Actually Smart Summon, FSD on Cybertruck, FSD v13, and the expansion of FSD outside of North America.

This was Tesla’s initial roadmap which was provided on September 5th.

September 2024

• v12.5.2 with ~3x improved miles between necessary interventions

• v12.5.2 on AI3 computer (unified models for AI3 and AI4)

• Actually Smart Summon

• Cybertruck Autopark

• Eye-tracking with sunglasses

• End-to-End network on highway

• Cybertruck FSD

October 2024

• Unpark, Park and Reverse in FSD

• v13 with ~6x improved miles between necessary interventions

Q1 2025

• FSD in Europe (pending regulatory approval)

• FSD in China (pending regulatory approval)

Elon Musk also replied to Tesla’s post, saying that, hopefully, right-hand drive markets will also get FSD in late Q1 or early Q2.

Goals Tesla Met

While we’re only at the end of October, Tesla managed to check off their September goals with a perfect score, nailing all of their goals such as eye-tracking with sunglasses, FSD on the Cybertruck and releasing Actually Smart Summon in the United States and Canada.

They also released the unified FSD model for HW3 and AI4, although it seems like the good news may stop there for HW3 owners. At least Tesla has recently said HW3 owners will get a free upgrade to more capable hardware if Tesla isn’t able to achieve unsupervised FSD on those vehicles.

Goals Tesla Is Still Working On

Although the company met its September milestones, the October goals have been delayed. Initially targeting the release of unpark, park, and reverse features and FSD v13 for October, Tesla now plans to integrate these features with FSD v13 in November.

The delay isn’t surprising given the ambitious goals, but we’re thrilled to see that Tesla is keeping the communication lines open.

The goals Tesla set to release FSD outside of North America are still to be determined, but we presume they may shift slightly due to the delay of FSD v13.

What’s Coming

While Tesla avoided dates and timelines for their upcoming features, they actually provided a lot more detail on what they’re working on and what we can expect in FSD v13. Unfortunately for HW3 owners, most of these improvements appear to be destined for Hardware 4 (AI4).

Complete Rollout of End-to-End

Tesla’s first item on its updated list is to complete the rollout of its end-to-end highway stack. Tesla’s current highway stack is based on FSD v11 and doesn’t feature end-to-end AI, meaning that AI is only used for input and not to control the vehicle. End-to-end AI essentially has AI managing everything in the vehicle, from detecting objects and lane markers to the steering and brake pedals.

Tesla started including end-to-end for highway driving in FSD v12.5.5 for the Cybertruck and then opened it up to other AI4 vehicles with FSD 12.5.6. The latest public FSD version is FSD 12.5.6.1, but it’s only available for AI4 vehicles.

The majority of vehicles with FSD are still on version 12.5.4, which doesn’t include the new highway stack. Tesla aims to release the updated highway stack to all AI4 vehicles next week, which will also include improvements to stop smoothness and improved bad weather notifications.

Actually Smart Summon

While Actually Smart Summon was released in September in North America, most of the world is still waiting. Tesla now says that A.S.S. will be available in other regions but didn’t provide a timeline. Users who bought or subscribe to Enhanced Autopilot or FSD in Europe should expect to receive this feature as part of Tesla’s normal feature releases instead of being a part of a special FSD build. It’s possible this could come in Tesla’s next major update, possibly 2024.44.

It’s not clear whether Tesla’s list was in any sort of order, but if it is, we could expect Actually Smart Summon sooner rather than later.

Improved FSD for HW3

Tesla’s updated list was largely focused on FSD for AI4, but HW3 did get mentioned in one bullet point item. Tesla says that HW3 should receive improved FSD v12.5.x models for city driving. Unfortunately, this almost sounds like bad news. AI4 mentions in the roadmap talk about FSD v13 and end-to-end highway support, while HW3 specifically states improved “city-driving,” possibly saying that end-to-end highway driving is not coming to HW3 vehicles soon.

Given that a new version of FSD v12.5.4.2 just started rolling out for HW3 vehicles, it looks like it may be a while before HW3 owners have access to the new highway stack. Earlier this month, Musk said that HW3 owners should receive an update that will increase FSD’s smoothness, so it seems like this is what Tesla is referring to in their roadmap.

FSD V13

The rest of Tesla’s post was dedicated to FSD v13. Tesla provided a lot of specifics such as FSD v13 unlocking the full resolution of Tesla’s HW4 cameras. The computer will now process full-resolution video at 36 FPS instead of using lower frames per second or scaling the video down.

FSD v13 will also increase the AI model by three times and data by 4.2 times. Tesla expects this to provide better collision avoidance, improved traffic controls and navigation.

FSD Unsupervised Feature Complete

Tesla’s VP of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, is just as excited about v13. He reposted Telsa’s post and said that a lot of work is going into the FSD v13 release and that Tesla expects v13 to make FSD Unsupervised feature complete. This is far from saying that FSD v13 will achieve autonomy, but simply that all the pieces of the puzzle are now in place with v13. The car will be able to navigate from a garage to its parking spot at a destination without any human input. Each of these pieces will likely still need to be refined over time to achieve unsupervised FSD.

Release Date for FSD V13

Tesla is targeting the release of FSD v13 to employees by the end of this week. Tesla expects the update to go through several iterations before it’s released to customers in FSD v13.3. Tesla says that the target launch for a public version of FSD v13.3 is around Thanksgiving for AI4 vehicles.

FSD Arrival Options

In addition to FSD v13 including the ability to “unpark,” reverse and park itself, Tesla will also add various options for when the vehicle arrives at its destination. Users will be able to choose from simply pulling over, parking in a parking spot or driveway or even a garage.

We believe that “unpark” in this statement refers to the ability for the user to engage Autopilot while the vehicle is still parked. The vehicle will automatically shift from Park to Drive and drive or reverse out of its parking spot before proceeding to its destination.

Detecting Emergency Vehicles

One other item Tesla pointed out in their roadmap is that FSD v13 will process audio inputs to better handle emergency vehicles. FSD now appears to rely only on detecting emergency vehicles visually, but with FSD v13, Teslas will be able to detect them audibly as well. Unfortunately, all Teslas only have microphones inside the cabin, which are currently used for phone calls and voice commands, but Tesla will soon continuously process the audio to detect emergency vehicles and potentially other things.

Outlook

Tesla has already integrated some v13 improvements and reports a 4x increase in miles between necessary interventions compared to v12.5.4. It’s clear that Tesla’s focus is on AI4 and reaching its goal of Unsupervised FSD. They appear very focused on this goal and will do whatever it takes to get there. Right now, that means focusing on AI4, but if at any point they run out of compute power needed there, they could shift to AI5, but that’s not expected to happen any time soon.

AI5, which is included in the Cybercab, isn’t expected to be released until the end of the year. We expect Tesla to continue marching toward achieving autonomy, regardless of the power required. Once they can figure out FSD, they can work backwards to get it working on older hardware.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

Not a Tesla App

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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