True to their word, Tesla has finally launched FSD V12.6 on the 30th of December, squeaking in under the promised timeline before the end of the year. FSD V12.6 for HW3 vehicles is software update 2024.45.25.10, and the release notes reveal several interesting things about the update, but it was mostly what we expected — which is a good thing.
We expected FSD V12.6 to include End to End for highway driving, improved city streets behavior and potentially some features from FSD V13, and that’s exactly what happened.
According to Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, Tesla has also pulled in some improvements from V13 into this V12.6 release. This release has started rolling out to some Model S and Model X vehicles, but not the Model 3 and Model Y. Ashok says that it should become available for those models within a week.
FSD V12.6
V12.6 is supposed to be a big update for Hardware 3 vehicles and is part of Tesla’s commitment to continuing to support older vehicles. Let’s break down the release notes and talk about what’s new and what came from FSD V13.
End-to-End on Highway
The new end-to-end highway stack has finally arrived for HW3 vehicles. The new highway stack should mean better decision-making on the freeway. Up until now, HW3 vehicles have been using FSD V11’s stack for highway driving.
When End-to-End was introduced on city streets, it brought drastic improvements in how FSD was handled between V11.4.9 and V12.3.6. HW3 owners will hopefully see similar improvements in how the vehicle behaves on the highway.
Improved City Streets Behavior
As part of the update, Tesla has honed in on some of the issues with behavior on city streets, which should address the false green light braking and other issues that have been prevalent in current FSD V12 builds. That’ll be a big improvement, as it has become one of the sticking points for V12.
Speed Profiles
The updated speed profiles, including Hurry Mode, have now arrived. For now, the speed profiles are restricted to roads with a 50mph (80km/h) minimum speed limit, which was the same limit HW4 vehicles saw on FSD V12.5. Here is the breakdown of the new speed profiles:
Chill will drive in slower lanes, with minimal lane changes, and more strictly adhere to the speed limit. The minimal lane changes button has been removed, so if you want to have minimal lane changes, switch your profile to chill.
Standard is the new Average. It will drive at a normal speed, keeping pace and adjusting in accordance with traffic. It will dynamically adjust based on how fast traffic is moving based on Max Speed, and will make lane changes to stay at or around the speed of traffic.
Hurry replaces Assertive and will drive faster while also making more frequent lane changes to stay at or above the speed limit. It is fairly aggressive with its lane changes and looks for opportunities to get ahead or cut through the flow of traffic.
Earlier & More Natural Lane Change Decisions
This is going to be one of the most noticeable changes for HW3 users. FSD has always struggled with lane selection, especially in advance of an upcoming turn or exit. Tesla has put in a lot of work in previous FSD V12 versions - namely V12.5 and its offshoots, and these improvements should translate over to FSD V12.6 just as well.
We’re hoping to see considerably improved performance on V12.6 due to this particular set of changes.
Redesigned Controller (FSD V13)
The redesigned controller is a big change - and actually was brought down from FSD V13. The controller is what tracks your own vehicle, as well as other vehicles and objects around the vehicle. Smoother and more accurate tracking for the controller means that FSD will be able to make better decisions, resulting in higher confidence and smoother driving.
Autospeed is now gone, and is now replaced with Max Speed Offset. Tesla recommends the Max Speed Offset be set to 40%. You’ll instead be able to use the FSD Driver Profiles to better control vehicle speed. Chill will keep you at or below the speed limit, while Average will keep you around the speed limit. Hurry does what it sounds like and will speed up, if possible, up to that Max Speed Offset.
The minimum and maximum offsets are 40%, so if the limit is 50mph, your FSD speed limit will be up to 70 mph, while at -40%, it could travel as slow as 30 mph.
When Does It Arrive?
The update was available to employees early yesterday, and it later went out in an extremely limited fashion to some non-employees last night. Right now, it’s also limited to Model S and Model X vehicles with HW3. We should hopefully see a roll out to additional Model S/X cars in the coming days, but Ashok has already stated that it’ll be about a week before it’s available for other models.
That means that the majority of Model 3/Y owners with HW3 will likely have to wait at least a couple of weeks before receiving the update. We’re looking forward to seeing the first few drives and reviews of FSD V12.6.
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Last night on X, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will be expanding the service area for its Robotaxi Network pilot in Austin, Texas, this coming weekend. This is the first official confirmation we’ve had of a date for expansion, following news that Tesla is hiring more Vehicle Operators and plans to expand the Robotaxi supervisor ratio in the coming months.
This is a sign of Tesla’s confidence in the Robotaxi pilot program and its current FSD builds.
Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend
The announcement confirms the sights we’ve been seeing of Tesla’s engineering validation vehicles focusing on areas outside the initial geofence. This public test shows that Tesla was likely finalizing FSD builds and gathering the necessary safety data to push the boundaries for the service, and this upcoming weekend’s expansion will be the first direct result of that work.
Given the increase in service zone size, this expansion will also likely include the addition of more vehicles to the initial Robotaxi fleet of approximately 20 vehicles. We expect the new number to be anywhere from 30-50 vehicles serving both the original and new areas, combined, based on Tesla’s previously expected rollout schedule.
What to Expect
While the exact new boundaries haven’t been released, it is almost certain that the expansion will include the South Congress Bridge and the downtown core areas of Austin. Expanding into a dense urban zone will include more complex intersections, heavy pedestrian traffic, and a unique road layout. That is a major vote of confidence for Robotaxi FSD’s capabilities.
The expansion will also help Tesla to close the service area gap with Waymo, its primary autonomous competitor in the city. This quick expansion is a sign of just how scalable Tesla’s vision-only approach is, versus Waymo’s arduous and drawn-out mapping processes.
We also expect that with this first service zone expansion, Tesla will continue to invite more people to its Robotaxi Network in the coming weeks. Tesla has already sent out various rounds of events, as they’ll need users to continue using the system. If you’re waiting for an invite, it may be time to start getting excited about the next rollout.
We’ve been hearing about Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, coming to Teslas for almost two years now, but this is finally coming to fruition soon. XAI unveiled Grok 4 last night, but the entire stream didn’t mention Teslas. However, Musk later posted on X that Grok will arrive in Tesla vehicles “by next week.”
Between leaks and the Grok mobile app, there’s a lot we already know about Grok, but there are a few missing pieces that will be cleared when it finally arrives.
Next Week, or Next Next Week?
Musk said that Grok would arrive by next week, meaning it could arrive before then. However, based on how Musk typically states Tesla timelines, there are a few things to consider that give us a better idea of what to expect.
First, whenever Musk posts a Tesla timeline on X, he typically means when it’ll be released to employees and not a public release. Expect this to be the same thing.
Tesla releases software updates to employees first for a final round of testing before starting a gradual release to the public. Sometimes issues are found, especially with FSD updates, and the update needs some fixes before being released publicly. So expect employees to get it by next week, and not necessarily normal Tesla owners.
The second part to this is that Tesla always rolls out their updates gradually, so when it does finally arrive, it’ll only be available on a small percentage of vehicles. Tesla will gradually monitor issues and logs, continuing the rollout as long as no major issues are found.
Which Software Update?
The entire Grok UI was already included in software update 2025.20, but it’s not exposed to users. Typically, a new feature like Grok requires a vehicle update to be added; however, this version may be different, as it’s locked behind a server-side configuration.
Tesla likely has the ability to enable it for all supported vehicles with a simple switch. However, we feel more confident in it being rolled out in Tesla’s next major update, which is likely to be 2025.24 or 2025.26. Rolling it out in a new update aligns with how Tesla has historically introduced features.
If they turned it on for everyone at the same time, they could be exposing everyone to potential new issues, rather than only a smaller segment of users. While Grok is now well-tested through X and the Grok app, there are several elements that are new in Teslas, likely including the ability to control various vehicle functions, such as opening the glove box or other capabilities that voice commands are currently capable of. The Grok interface in the vehicle is also entirely new and may have some bugs associated with it that will need to be addressed, especially if they impact other features.
What we can likely expect is that Tesla will make some tweaks or bug fixes to Grok with the next major update that weren’t included in update 2025.20 and they’ll begin rolling it out to employees and then customers.
Supported Vehicles
Speaking of supported vehicles, thanks to the behind-the-scenes look at Grok, we have a good idea of the vehicles that will be supported. Tesla uses the same code for most of its vehicles, but then it’s compiled for each type of hardware. However, only the needed code is compiled for each vehicle, meaning that some pieces are left out entirely. Unfortunately, Grok code is not included in Intel software builds, meaning that only AMD Ryzen-based vehicles will receive Grok, at least initially.
We’ve seen Tesla go back and add support for Intel vehicles after it initially released a feature for AMD vehicles. We saw this with the weather radar overlay and several other features in the past. However, Tesla has been developing code with web technologies lately. While this makes development easier, it just doesn’t perform as well on the slower Intel hardware, causing it to be left out. We saw this with the new Dashcam Viewer, which is entirely coded in HTML, CSS, and JS. The new viewer was available on HW3 and HW4 vehicles, but only those that included the Ryzen infotainment processor.
Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.
There’s a lot we’re expecting in Grok for Teslas. Some people will absolutely love it because it’ll completely transform their drives from a singular experience to feeling like they have a knowledgeable person sitting right next to them. Given the recent controversies surrounding Grok, some people will strongly oppose it. Hopefully, Tesla makes it easy for those users to turn off Grok.
The voice command system, which is activated through the steering wheel, is expected to be replaced with Grok. This will mean that you’ll be able to talk to your vehicle much more naturally, rather than having to remember specific syntax and commands, which should be a major improvement.
We’re personally looking forward to just being able to ask questions that pop into our heads while driving, such as What’s the date of Tesla’s next event, or How many miles away is Mars? Knowledge will be available at the touch of a finger and more accessible than ever.
Grok is also expected to support continuous conversations, meaning that you’ll be able to hold a conversation with it and go back and forth about a certain topic. While there are hints of a wake word in the code, for now, it seems like you’ll press the steering wheel button once to activate it, and then again to turn it off.
For those excited about AI and Grok, this will be one of the biggest additions to Tesla’s software in years, possibly only rivaled by the Dashcam / Sentry Mode feature and FSD Beta.
It shouldn’t be long now before we all have a chance to try it out for ourselves.
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