Details emerge about Elon Musk's Master Plan Part 3 in 'Getting Stoned' podcast

By Gabe Rodriguez Morrison
Johnna Crider interviews Elon Musk on your podcast
Johnna Crider interviews Elon Musk on your podcast
Getting Stoned Podcast

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently unveiled some details about Tesla's Master Plan Part 3. His comments come from a preview snippet of @JohnnaCrider's 'Getting Stoned Podcast'.

"Master plan part three is about scaling, like how do we scale to get to that fully sustainable energy economy and what tonnage do we need of what materials, and what is the maybe the best way to get all of those materials and turn them into batteries"

He added, "The fundamental governor of the rate at which we can transition to sustainability is the rate at which we can grow the output of lithium-ion batteries"

Elon said before that Tesla's master plan part 3 was about achieving scale but here he is specifying that it is about the tonnage of materials needed to achieve that scale.

Given these comments and Teslas concerns around lithium supply, it seems that Tesla is getting involved in mining although Jhonna's recap of the interview said:

"Elon emphasized that he has no desire for Tesla to go into the mining industry. He made that super clear to me and I just wanted to emphasize that for anyone curious or even hopeful."

Perhaps Elon is saying that he personally has no desire for Tesla to go into the mining industry, but they have to in order to achieve a fully sustainable energy economy.

The full interview was released today and is available below:

Other topics that were spoken about include the declining birthrate, poverty and literacy as a solution.

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Tesla Is Adding 'Weather Radar' to Intel Vehicles

By Karan Singh
Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

When the 2024 Tesla Holiday Update originally launched, they introduced awesome new features, but unfortunately, one of the most exciting, the weather radar, was only available for vehicles with the AMD Ryzen processor (MCU 3).

Intel-based vehicles didn’t receive the precipitation maps at all and instead only had access to the Weather at Destination feature. However, we’re excited to report that Tesla has now released a version of the weather radar overlay that’s compatible with Intel vehicles.

Intel Precipitation Maps

It sounds like Tesla needed to optimize the precipitation map for Intel vehicles, which feature a slower CPU. We received this news from a follower who reached out after finding his Intel-based Model 3 in Norway had the ability to see the new weather map with update 2024.44.25.3.

This update began rolling out just recently and was originally seen as a bugfix update. In the release notes for the update, Tesla lists all of the Holiday features again, making it easy to miss the new ‘Precipitation Map and Weather at Destination’ feature.

Update 2024.44.25.3

FSD Supervised 12.5.4.2
Installed on 11.6% of fleet
850 Installs today
Last updated: Dec 19, 6:50 pm UTC

While we thought the radar overlay feature may be reduced in some fashion for Intel cars, this isn’t the case. This update brings the maps in their full capacity to Intel, with no reduction in features. The animated overlay, showcasing the last three hours of precipitation, is available in the same way as AMD vehicles.

The precipitation icon shows up at the far right side of the screen, right next to the Superchargers icon.

You’re also able to zoom out or swipe to view the radar anywhere you like or zoom in to be more precise. You can also use it while driving. However, the overlay is pretty distracting, so it can make it confusing if you’re trying to figure out where to go.

The last two key points for the new precipitation maps are that if you have Points of Interest (POIs) enabled, the precipitation overlay will hide them - except for Charging POIs. You’ll also need Premium Connectivity to take advantage of this feature - even if you’re connected to Wi-Fi via a hotspot.

If you’d like to see the weather radar in action or learn about all the smaller features Tesla added, be sure to check out our in-depth review of the new weather features.

We’re excited to see this feature drop for Intel-based vehicles, as Tesla is still committed to supporting them and finding new ways to optimize features on the older hardware. We’re hoping some of the other features arrive on Intel as well, including the new Parked screen and updated full-screen Autopilot visualizations outside of North America.

Tesla to Start Using Audio and Vision in FSD V13.4

By Karan Singh
Whole Mars Catalog

With FSD V13.2.1 finally rolling out to HW4/AI4 vehicle owners this week, we’ve been super excited to see all the new features, including Park, Unpark, and Reverse in action for the first time.

However, that’s not everything - more is coming soon. We previously reported that Tesla is collecting audio input to build neural networks for audio, and now we’re learning that that capability will arrive in FSD V13.4.

Better Audio Handling

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, mentioned that better handling of audio inputs is coming as part of FSD V13.4. That’ll be an interesting change, as the current handling of emergency vehicles on V13.2.1 is already pretty good.

However, we’re sure that being able to recognize emergency vehicles audibly will improve detection speed and reliability. Similarly to vision, FSD will start analyzing all the sounds it hears, and look for signs of emergency vehicles.

FSD will be able to make a reasonable determination on whether the sound of the siren is approaching or just echoing off of nearby terrain or buildings using the Doppler effect. It’s a simple mathematical principle where the frequency of a sound wave increases as the source moves towards the observer and decreases as it moves away. 

Interestingly, Tesla will be using the internal microphone for this task - as there are no external microphones on any Teslas… yet. This microphone is sufficient for one simple reason - sirens are made loud enough for humans to hear them inside a moving car.

Better Than a Human

Some users have wondered how the vehicle will be able to distinguish between sirens on the radio and in real life. While I’m sure we’re not the only ones to have ever been fooled by a siren on the radio, Teslas won’t be as easily fooled.

Tesla could actually take the audio going out to the radio and remove it from the sounds captured by the microphone, effectively removing sirens from the captured audio. In addition to being able to measure the intensity and direction of the sound, your vehicle should be able to accurately recognize emergency vehicles, even before a human can.

Opt-In Audio Sharing

Tesla is now allowing FSD users to opt-in to sharing audio data. The prompt for sharing audio data is on FSD V12.5.6.4, V13.2 and V13.2.1. It’s also expected to be in the upcoming Hardware 3 version of FSD 12.6.

However, it’s worth noting that Tesla’s release notes between V13.2 and V13.2.1 changed slightly for audio sharing. Tesla initially mentioned that the vehicle would capture 10-second audio clips when a siren is heard.

In FSD V13.2.1, Tesla updated the data sharing feature, letting users know that audio recordings are now said to be captured when the vehicle detects an emergency vehicle instead of detecting a siren. The audio clip is also not limited to 10 seconds anymore.

Opting into audio sharing will share microphone recordings alongside all the other data that Tesla regularly collects as part of its FSD training. Of course, if you're uncomfortable with that, you’ll be able to opt out of just the audio portion. Tesla’s privacy policy also discloses that they anonymize and sanitize the data during collection and processing.

While vision plays a much larger role, expect Tesla to deal with the capturing and analyzing of audio data in a very similar manner.

We’ve already seen improved handling for school buses on V13.2, so we’re excited to see what else Tesla does in the next few months. Perhaps handling school zones would be the next big item to tackle.

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