Many users of FSD have found that the highway stack tends to be extremely conservative. Even with FSD V13, it maintains a speed far lower than the one selected.
This has been an issue with FSD’s speed profiles for a long time. While tapping the accelerator sometimes works, on V13, FSD will often slow right back down to the speed it was originally at - maintaining whatever speed the ego prefers.
Set Speed Vs Max Speed
Phil Duan, a Senior Staff Software Engineer on Tesla’s AI team, made a series of comments about the “set speed” vs “max speed” and the issues many users are experiencing.
Set Speed: Back in October, Phil mentioned the fact that set speed is a legacy concept from cruise control. For FSD, the vehicle needs to be able to determine the correct speed - the user should just have to set a driving style, and FSD should do the right thing. That also includes picking the most appropriate speed to drive at, given the current environment.
Max Speed: Max Speed should be the maximum speed you want the vehicle to stay below. It should not be confused with Set Speed, which Phil says that by design, “FSD will unlikely accelerate to match it.”
Just like switching from signal stalks to signal buttons, this is another Tesla change that users will have to get used to - as FSD will only drive as fast as it deems safe rather than the speed the user wants to drive at.
Upcoming Change
Phil replied to Dan Burkland on X and mentioned that Tesla is aware of the feedback and that there will be an update to the highway stack to address the issue where the vehicle’s speed yoyos up and down. This update will, in particular, target the vehicle’s speed on the highway and the following distance to a lead vehicle - both of which are now not adjustable by the user in FSD V13.
While it looks like Tesla is going to improve the vehicle’s speed on the highway, a user-selectable speed is not something they’re going to add and users will need to continue to use Speed Profiles to “set” their driving speed.
We’re interested to see where this update takes us because many first-time users have experienced confusion over why their vehicle doesn’t achieve the speed that they set - having been conditioned to expect that speed as the set speed.
FSD V13.2 is about a month old now, so it looks like we may see FSD V13.3 soon.
During another one of his gaming live streams, Elon Musk confirmed that Grok in Teslas is coming soon. According to Elon, you’ll be able to talk to your Tesla and ask for anything.
This seems in line with what we recently predicted - the arrival of a Smart Assistant from xAI, integrated right into your Tesla. We’ve seen the initial indications of this Smart Assistant beginning to form.
We’ve been super excited to see the Smart Assistant, but this is the first confirmation that it will be Grok.
Real-time Information
Grok is xAI’s advanced large language model (LLM) AI, designed to deliver highly capable and dynamic responses. Unlike many other LLMs, Grok can access real-time information and adapt its answers based on the latest news and discussions happening on X’s platform, making it uniquely responsive to breaking news and evolving events.
However, Grok still doesn’t have voice support like other models - including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It can generate images, documents, tables, and reason very effectively, but it has yet to deliver that information audibly.
Adjust Vehicle Features
Grok’s real-time nature is a capability that could be super useful in a vehicle. When you want to stop on a road trip for food, you can ask for the best local restaurant that is the least busy. Grok will potentially be able to gather all this information, and then enter the navigation entry as your next stop - and then Tesla’s FSD will take you there.
Grok will also be able to process in-vehicle commands intelligently - commands like “Open Charge Port” or “My Hands are Cold” will work through Grok, and it’ll make adjustments to your vehicle as required. Interfacing closely with the vehicle will be a capability that most other smart assistants won’t have - and none will be able to set a navigation destination, choose charging stops, or ask questions that depend on your vehicle’s location, such as send me the to closest 250kW Supercharger.
While voice commands can already perform some of these features, the voice system is expected to be greatly improved with Grok’s integration, letting drivers speak more naturally instead of remembering the syntax that the voice command system understands.
All Teslas will be able to use Grok - Elon Musk
General Knowledge
Tesla owners will finally have a Google Assistant-like smart assistant where you’ll be able to get quick answers to everyday questions, like what’s the weather for tomorrow or what’s Tesla’s stock price.
Supported Vehicles
Grok will continue to analyze and deliver responses on Tesla’s or xAI’s servers rather than inside your vehicle. Processing language and then running it through the AI network isn’t a small task, and given FSD taking priority on-vehicle, Grok will be dependent on an internet connection. The good news here is that since the heavy lifting is all down server-side, Grok will be available for all vehicles, according to Musk. Musk said during his live stream that “all Teslas will be able to use Grok.”
This will certainly mean that vehicles with Intel and Ryzen processors will have the new voice assistant available, while vehicles with MCU 1 are unknown at this time. Since this is mostly a server-side change, we also expect legacy Model S and X vehicles to receive the feature.
Premium Connectivity?
While voice commands are free to all Tesla owners, Tesla has been developing a lot of features lately that require its Premium Connectivity package for about $10/month. Just in the last few months, Tesla has added YouTube Music, Amazon Music, SiriusXM, the ability to stream dashcam footage on your phone, weather radar overlays, and more.
There are several paths Tesla could take. Tesla could bundle Grok into Premium Connectivity, it could require a Premium subscription on X, or it could be a completely free feature.
Release Date
Seeing Grok finally on the horizon is super exciting after we’ve been pining for a Smart Voice Assistant in Teslas for years. Musk said that it’s “coming soon,” during his stream, but we still don’t know exactly when. However, Tesla and xAI have been making several changes over the past few months that hint at this upcoming change. We’d expect this feature to launch in the first half of 2025 and potentially even much sooner.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the US has said that it is opening an initial probe into Tesla’s new Actually Smart Summon feature. This preliminary investigation into Actually Smart Summon follows the report of four (4) crashes allegedly involving the use of Actually Smart Summon.
NHTSA has said that the reports say that users “had too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement.”
Mainstream headlines have included that NHTSA has opened a probe into 2.6 million vehicles, but they’ve really opened a probe into four incidents, which seems a lot more reasonable.
Initial Probe
This is just an initial investigation to determine the circumstances of the four crashes and not actually any indication of whether the NHTSA will perform a full investigation or request a recall/change of the feature from Tesla.
Interestingly, the NHTSA has said it will assess Actually Smart Summon’s use on public roads, maximum speed, and line of sight requirements. Currently, Actually Smart Summon cannot be used on public roads, has an extremely low overall speed, and can only be used within a relatively small area.
The summary of the report mentions that the incidents involve Actually Smart Summon failing to detect posts or parked vehicles, resulting in a crash. Additionally, the summary also mentions that some of the incidents reported are actually under the older Smart Summon feature - which has been known to have more issues, as it relied solely upon ultrasonic sensors (USS) rather than the newer Tesla Vision system.
We’re interested to see what the NHTSA finds and whether this means that Tesla will have to roll back functionality of Actually Smart Summon, which has only recently launched. We’re hoping that the NHTSA finds results in favor of Tesla - who has put safety first with many of its features.
Transport Canada
Transport Canada, the NHTSA’s Canadian equivalent, has made no motions to introduce a similar probe, and the feature is available in Canada. We reached out to Transport Canada, and we received a statement that Transport Canada has not received any reports related to Actually Smart Summon as of today.
Crashing into a pole with Actually Smart Summon is a difficult feat - as it will stop for pedestrians crossing the road 15 feet away or decide on its own that it is not safe to continue and that it must stop. We expect these incidents involving poles likely occurred because users parked their vehicles right against a parking bollard or similar object, and the car moved slightly forward or backward to check what was around it, a noted issue in Actually Smart Summon.
For now, we’ll watch this one closely, but we may have to cross our fingers that Actually Smart Summon’s range or other capabilities are reduced in the future.
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