Musk Shares Details on FSD Beta v11: Neural Nets to Be Used for Vehicle Control

By Nuno Cristovao
Elon Musk says we may get FSD Beta v11.3 as early as this week
Elon Musk says we may get FSD Beta v11.3 as early as this week
Not a Tesla App

Elon Musk has provided further guidance on Tesla's next major release of FSD Beta, v11.3. Last week Musk said that v11.3 would be ready in about 'two weeks' and would contain many major improvements.

We've heard these two-week estimates before, but it's reassuring that Musk is being specific with details on this upcoming release.

Now just seven days after his last tweet, Elon Musk is giving us more details on this significant upgrade.

Timeline

Musk said he expects FSD Beta v11.3 to start rolling out to some customers later this week, or next week at the latest. This matches up with his initial two weeks estimate a week ago.

Elon Musk's estimates are known to be overly optimistic, but given the number of details he's releasing, it sounds like Tesla may be close to releasing this next build.

FSD Beta v11.3 will likely roll out to Tesla employees first and then go out to select FSD Beta testers, possibly the original OG group. Since this is a major milestone and includes major improvements, expect a slow and gradual rollout. Although we may get our first glimpse into FSD Beta v11 this week, it may be several weeks or more before the majority of customers have access to this beta.

Neural Nets for Vehicle Behavior

A week ago Musk said this upgrade will include 'many major improvements.' Last night Musk revealed some additional details. He said there will be "many small things," one of which will be that Tesla will begin to use neural nets for vehicle navigation and control, instead of just vision.

Today Tesla uses neural networks to determine the vehicle's surroundings, where objects are, what they are, and their distances from the vehicle to create a 3D environment known as 'vector space.' With this information, the vehicle can then plan a path and navigate around these objects toward its destination.

However, based on Musk's comment, it sounds like Tesla is currently only using neural nets to determine its environment and not for controlling the vehicle. This means that how the vehicle behaves, how it finds a path, and how it moves is still a process that is coded traditionally.

In the same way that Tesla uses millions of images to determine what a stop sign or traffic cone is, it sounds like Tesla will now use a large number of examples to determine how to best control the vehicle in various situations.

That could mean that Tesla will take millions of quality examples of how to gradually accelerate or slow down, based on real driving behavior to determine how the vehicle should accelerate in different situations.

This could be applied to every driving characteristic such as turning, slow downing, driving around a parked vehicle, etc.

If Tesla starts leveraging neural nets to aid vehicle control we may soon see drastic improvements to vehicle behavior, making it much smoother and human-like.

New Features

Although Elon Musk didn't specifically mention new features coming to FSD Beta v11.3, there are several that have been talked about in the past that could show up in this major full self-driving update.

Reverse Creep

Reverse Creep has been a feature that has been talked about as far back as FSD Beta 10.13. This feature would allow the vehicle to go into reverse to move out of the way of danger or adjust its trajectory. Right now FSD Beta will only ever move forward, so this improvement would be a giant step toward achieving human-like behavior.

A good use case for this is when the vehicle moves forward for better visibility. There may be times when the vehicle sees a car coming after moving creeping forward. In these cases, it'd be smart to let the vehicle reverse back to its previous position if it is now in the path of traffic.

Navigating Without Map Data & GPS

In the past Musk also alluded to the fact that Tesla is working on the neural networks' ability to complete 'dead reckoning' navigation, which is navigating based only on inertial measurements such as speed, direction and wheel movement.

He gave underground parking garages as an example of where FSD would need the ability to navigate without GPS or map data.

The car will be able to do this by using its last known GPS location and then determine its future location using only a compass, wheel movement and speed.

FSD Beta v11

FSD Beta v11 has always been expected to be a big leap forward, and as we get closer, that hasn't changed. This update is expected to be a huge improvement to what is currently available to customers. Although Musk's timelines have usually shifted and features have typically taken longer than initially planned, it looks like we may be getting close to the next major release for FSD Beta.

Although we're still years away from true full self-driving, Tesla's mission inches closer with every update. 

Recently there was also a leak revealing some details of Tesla's upcoming cameras in hardware 4.0, which are expected to include a fan and heater for select cameras.

Tesla’s Hollywood Diner: In-Car Controls & Theater Screens Turned On [VIDEO]

By Karan Singh
Sky Fox

Tesla has been quietly building something pretty unique on the streets of Hollywood—and we’ve been keeping a close eye on it. That’s right: the long-anticipated Tesla Hollywood Drive-In, Diner, and Supercharger is shaping up to be one of the most creative approaches to EV charging yet.

But this isn’t your average Supercharger site. It features a retro-futuristic, 24-hour diner and an outdoor movie theater, blending the charm of the 1980s with the tech-forward vibe of the 2020s.

Construction has been underway for quite some time, with the Cybertruck-inspired stainless steel structure going up around mid-2024. And more recently, we spotted hints in the Tesla app that the Diner’s debut is getting close.

Diner Controls in App / Car

Tesla hacker Greentheonly managed to spot some new evidence of changes within Tesla’s 2025.8.6 software build, which includes a new modal for “Charger Diner Controls”. While there isn’t anything to activate this new modal just yet, it is an indication of how Tesla intends to integrate the experience right into each and every Tesla.

The text in the modal reads: “Plug in, place your order, recharge” - which means that once you arrive and are plugged in, you’ll be able to place your order - and likely pay through Tesla’s payment system. It seems like this will all be done through either the Tesla app or the vehicle’s tocuh screen. No need to fumble with a separate app or pull out your wallet.

This is definitely a level of integration you just can’t have anywhere else - and just like any other Supercharger site, the Tesla Diner will appear as a suggested site for charging when you’re navigating or looking around the Hollywood area.

45-Foot Screens Ready

Those two absolutely gigantic 45-foot LED screens have now been turned on for the first time, meaning that Tesla is likely close to opening the Supercharger site. The screens were spotted displaying some test patterns, as well as some Tesla-themed content. It really brings the construction site to life - and it's the clearest sign that the Diner is well on its way to completion.

We’re hoping that this first Tesla Diner sees plenty of success - and that Tesla begins opening more of these types of facilities throughout North America, and eventually globally. Given Tesla’s penchant for unique Superchargers, we imagine this could truly be the case one day.

Tesla’s FSD V13 Pushes HW4 Hardware Capabilities; End of Line for HW3?

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

As Tesla continues to push the capabilities of its hardware as it prepares for autonomy with FSD Unsupervised, there has been a distinct divergence in features between HW4-equipped vehicles on FSD V13, and HW3-equipped vehicles on FSD V12.6. 

There are definitely reasons for this, and Tesla hacker Greentheonly, over on X, went into great detail on some of the reasons why this divergence has continued and is likely to continue.

If you’re interested in some background, we recommend the following articles. Although they’re not necessary, you may enjoy reading them before diving right in if you enjoy this topic.

Back in the summer of 2024, we reported that Tesla’s HW4 had yet to reach its full potential, and that HW3 still had some compute to work with. However, FSD has undergone a rapid evolution - there are now fundamental differences driven by the hardware capabilities and sheer scale of the latest builds of FSD.

FSD V13’s Gargantuan Neural Networks

FSD V13 is a substantial leap for Tesla. It features substantially larger neural networks - the core brain that processes all the environmental data and makes decisions. Those networks are far larger in V13 than in V12, which results in a much smoother and human-like expereience.

Tesla’s FSD computers contain two nodes. According to Green’s analysis of FSD V13, Node B, which handles the actual end-to-end driving logic, tripled in size from 2.3 GB in V12 to a staggering 7.5 GB in V13. That’s a substantial increase, and one of the main reasons why HW3 can’t handle FSD V13. While Interestingly, Node A on HW4 remains similar in size to FSD V12, using up about 2.3 GB.

However, this massive size is also pushing the limits of HW4. While this isn’t necessarily a big problem immediately - at the end of the day, there is a limited amount of compute and ram available and model sizes will likely grow in the future. In fact, Tesla is planning to scale model sizes in the next FSD version and has already said they’ll need to optimize them, as context size is limited by on-board memory.

HW3 Limitations

Since HW3 can’t run the latest FSD models, where does this leave millions of Tesla vehicles equipped with the now-legacy FSD hardware? Are they hitting a dead end? Not exactly - Tesla has promised to replace HW3 computers with new units during the Q4 2024 Earnings Call, but only for those who have purchased FSD and only if Tesla is no longer able to update HW3 vehicles.

There’s no doubt Tesla hopes to achieve autonomy and then work backwards to make it compatible with HW3, but that’s unlikely to happen with the limited ram available on HW3.

Tesla’s AI team has continued to say that they’re still working on updating HW3 vehicles - but that they will be taking a backburner to updates for HW4 until the team can optimize the model efficiently enough to run on the smaller footprint. That means V12.6 isn’t just V13 “lite” - it is a distinctly different software branch tailored specifically for HW3’s capabilities.

Green's analysis showed that HW3 under V12.6 runs NNs totaling 1.2 GB on Node A and 3.1 GB on Node B, which is significantly smaller than the footprint of V13. Back in November, we discussed how Tesla is running a smaller and optimized FSD model on HW3, with the specific goal of achieving similar performance to V13. FSD V12.6 appears to be the current implementation of that smaller model strategy.

Green also found that of the total neural nets used for FSD, 135 are shared between the current V12.6 and FSD V13.2 releases, which is the result of Tesla’s AI team working to optimize and refine the V13 model for HW3. So some neural nets are shared between the two sets of hardware, while others are specific to HW3 or HW4.

AI4 in the Future

The fact that V13 is already stretching HW4’s limits makes us wonder about Tesla’s imminent release of AI5. Last year, Tesla mentioned that AI5 would be 18 months away - which is now about 8 months away, and potentially even sooner to help solve the autonomy problem.

At the same time, Tesla is looking to launch Unsupervised FSD in June in Austin, Texas, with presumably HW4, which would indicate that they’re confident in its capabilities.

Unless Tesla launches the Robotaxi network with AI5, we don’t believe AI5 will be a “must have” item. Undoubtedly, it will result in similar improvements to HW4 compared to HW3. However, the software needed to take advantage of the newer hardware could still be years away.

All eyes will be on Tesla’s Robotaxi network launch and the hardware required for it. For now, HW4 owners are in good hands with future updates are on the horizon, and we’re certainly excited for what’s next.

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