Tesla’s former AI Director, Andrej Karpathy, recently made an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast. Karpathy is an AI researcher, engineer, educator and a founding member of OpenAI. He spoke with Fridman on a variety of topics, including AI, his departure from Tesla, and his interest in returning to the company.
Karpathy’s five-year tenure at Tesla was a pivotal part of the company's AI development. During his time with the company, he helped advance Tesla's self-driving system from lane-keeping on highways to partially autonomous driving on city streets.
After taking a four-month sabbatical, Karpathy parted ways with Tesla in July 2022. When Karpathy announced he was leaving Tesla, he said it was a difficult decision and thanked the Tesla Autopilot team, looking forward to seeing their momentum continue. Karpathy also stated that he wanted to spend more time on his long-term passions including AI technology, open source, and education.
From the podcast, we learned more details about what led to Karpathy's departure (1 hour, 44 minute mark). Apparently, his role at the company had developed into more of a managerial position, which drifted away from his passion for technical work in AI.
Karpathy said, “I think over time during those five years; I’ve kind of gotten myself into a little bit of a managerial position. Most of my days were, you know, meetings and growing the organization and making decisions about sort of high-level strategic decisions about the team and what it should be working on and so on.”
“And it’s kind of like a corporate executive role, and I can do it. I think I’m okay at it, but it’s not like fundamentally what I enjoy, and so I think when I joined, there was no computer vision team because Tesla was just going from the transition of using Mobileye, a third-party vendor, for all of its computer vision to having to build its computer vision system. So when I showed up, there were two people training deep neural networks.”
Elon Musk was quick to react to Karpathy's interview, stating on Twitter that "Andrej will always be welcome at Tesla."
Karpathy played a key role in Tesla's FSD development and it would be great to see him return for a second act. Based on his interview, it sounds like he may be interested in returning to Tesla to work on the Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot.
Karpathy's Interview
You can watch Karpathy’s full interview with Lex Fridman below.
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While Tesla’s Cybertruck has access to FSD v13, it still doesn’t include some of the FSD features that are available on other HW4 vehicles. Features such as Start FSD from Park are currently not available on the Cybertruck.
Trusted sources have now informed Not a Tesla App that the Cybertruck will soon receive an FSD update that will enable a series of new features and bring the Cybertruck up to speed with other vehicles. The update is expected to arrive within the next 14 days.
Tesla’s AI team has been relatively quiet recently, and we haven’t seen a major FSD update since FSD v13.2.8 was released on February 17th, but we’re finally getting hints of what’s around the corner.
Here’s our exclusive look at what’s coming in the latest FSD update for Cybertruck.
New Features
If you don’t own a Cybertruck - or even if you do - you may not know that the Cybertruck is missing several FSD-related features. The first three features are all related to parking lot use and Tesla’s low-speed FSD stack, which hasn’t been available on the Cybertruck so far.
This FSD update will add the following features:
Start FSD from Park: Tesla’s Unpark feature allows FSD can be started while the vehicle is still in park. To do so, one can simply set their destination from the navigation and then tap and hold the blue Start FSD button. The car will shift out of park and into drive or reverse to get going.
Since FSD V13.2.1, Start FSD from Park now requires you to also tap the brake while holding down the Start FSD button to prevent accidental activation. This safeguard can be disabled in settings.
Ability to Reverse: FSD previously demonstrated quite a want to reverse - but it was never allowed to. You can tell the planner plans for the vehicle to go into reverse to follow the path, but once the vehicle needs to shift into reverse, it’s blocked from doing so. The Cybertruck will finally be able to shift into reverse - and also seamlessly shift between Park, Drive, and Reverse all by itself. This functionality also enables 3-point turns to help navigate tight spaces.
FSD can now do multi-point turns, even in super-tight locations like parking garages.
Park: Finally, when you arrive at your destination, FSD will now park itself if it finds an open spot near or at the final location. Previously, the user had to initiate Autopark - now, FSD will either switch over to Autopark to back in or park facing front-in based on the parking spot.
Tesla has indicated that new parking features will arrive in a future update that will allow the user to pick whether the vehicle pulls over, parks in a spot, or parks in a driveway or garage when it arrives at the destination.
Improved Controller
While the new features like Start FSD from Park are eye-catching, this improved controller will actually be the largest improvement to this FSD update.
This upcoming update improves FSD’s traffic control process, improving prediction accuracy, position tracking in 3D space, and environmental analysis. These changes allow FSD to make faster decisions, anticipate turns and lane changes sooner, and operate more smoothly.
The difference between FSD V12 and V13 had a major impact on driving feel and smoothness, but these improvements were never fully reached with the Cybertruck. While smoothness improved, it wasn’t on par with Tesla’s other HW4 models—until now.
Actually Smart Summon
The final part of the update is probably going to be the most fun - the arrival of Actually Smart Summon. This feature was launched back in September 2024 for other Tesla vehicles, but it was nowhere in sight for the Cybertruck.
We initially chalked this up to Tesla needing more time to improve and work on testing the Cybertruck’s vision accuracy with their LiDAR testing rigs. However, it really does seem like Tesla has been holding off on this update for quite some time to integrate the front bumper camera into Actually Smart Summon.
With Actually Smart Summon, other Tesla vehicles will sometimes roll backward in their parking spots - to ensure that nothing is up against the front bumper. This can make Actually Smart Summon unavailable when you’re parked too close to a wall, as the car doesn’t see what’s between the edge of the hood and the ground.
The front bumper camera is Tesla’s solution to this problem. The Cybertruck and the Refreshed Model Y are both equipped with a new camera in the front bumper, enabling them to see perfectly in this blind spot. At low speeds, the camera is extremely useful, providing excellent coverage of a zone of the vehicle that is generally difficult to see for drivers - and impossible for the primary camera cluster.
Update Release Date
This FSD update will be massive for Cybertruck owners as it’ll finally bring the latest FSD features and improvements to the electric truck.
From the very beginning, Tesla chose to use its own proprietary Linux-based operating system instead of relying heavily on CarPlay and Android Auto. This also meant that it had to develop its own mapping solution that would live at the center of its infotainment space.
These maps would need to seamlessly integrate with the vehicle to plan energy-efficient routes and dynamically adjust navigation based on the battery’s state of charge.
Tesla currently uses Google Maps for most of the underlying features of its Maps app for most of the world, with Baidu Maps data being leveraged in China. Some of the map data, such as street data and voice navigation, are preloaded and updated regularly. MapBox, another software provider that has been working on these projects for over a decade, supplies the routing engine.
Navigation Routing
In 2018, MapBox purchased the 'Valhalla' routing engine, which is now part of the core API MapBox provides to users and enterprise clients like Tesla. Valhalla includes features like expanded guidance with clear and concise instructions along the route, as well as turn restrictions, highway exit information, and time zones. Although Tesla relies on Google Map APIs to build out most of their navigation app, the routing is done on Tesla’s servers using Valhalla.
Some map features, such as live traffic visualization and satellite view, require a subscription to Tesla’s Premium Connectivity data plan to access; however, a vehicle with standard connectivity will still have access to traffic-based routing, the Trip Planner, and Supercharger stall availability.
Map Updates
Tesla releases new navigation maps about twice per year, but there is no hard rule. If the version of your maps is more than a year old, you may need to connect to WiFi to download the latest updates. Not having the latest map version could prevent certain features, such as FSD, from working. If you’re not able to connect to WiFi at home, you can try a Tesla Service Center, some Supercharger locations, or a local business that has WiFi access outside.
Keep in mind that map updates are several gigabytes in size and could take a considerable amount of time to download.
Map downloads are similar to software updates in that they are rolled out gradually and not everyone will have access to the latest version right away.
Unlike software updates, map updates are downloaded silently in the background when your vehicle is connected to WiFi, so you may not even be aware that your vehicle received newer navigation data.
What’s in a Map Update
Tesla uses a combination of streamed data and map data to display what you see on your navigation screen. The navigation data that is downloaded separately includes street-level data, speed limits, points of interest (business locations), and more.
While other data is actually streamed on request and you receive the latest version when you request it. This includes the navigation tiles or images, which are what you see visually on the navigation app. Routing is also computed on Tesla’s servers instead of in the vehicle if you have that option enabled under Controls > Navigation.
How to Check for a Map Update
On your car’s touchscreen, you can go to Controls > Software to see whether there is a map update available for your vehicle. Scroll down to Navigation Data, and your current map version will be listed underneath. It’ll look something like NA-2025.2-12345.
The navigation version consists of the region abbreviation, such as NA or EU, followed by the year and week number when the map data was created. The last five digits are the build number of the map data.
If your car is ready to download a map update but isn't connected to Wi-Fi, a download progress bar will appear, similar to a vehicle update. However, to download the most recent Tesla maps, your car must be connected to Wi-Fi.
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