Tesla May Be Ready To Sell More 4680 Model Ys Soon

Tesla may be ready to sell more 4680 Model Ys

MotorTrend

According to a report from Teslarati, Tesla could offer a new entry-level configuration of the Model Y for the 2023 model year. Tesla is reportedly preparing to offer a Standard Range All-Wheel Drive Model Y with 4680 batteries produced at Gigafactory Texas. The new version of the 2023 Model Y received approval from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA added three Certificates of Conformity for the 2023 Model Y to their database. The new versions approved by the EPA were:

• Model Y Long Range All-Wheel-Drive
• Model Y Performance All-Wheel-Drive
• Model Y All-Wheel-Drive

The EPA documents show that Tesla applied for approval of these Model Y configurations on September 30 and received Certificates of Conformity on October 19. The agency has yet to release range ratings for the three new versions.

In April, Tesla built Standard Range All-Wheel-Drive Model Ys at Gigafactory Texas, exclusively available to employees because the production of this configuration was battery-constrained. The vehicle had 279 miles (449km) but was sold for around $60,000, a steep price for the range offered.

Tesla built this exclusive Model Y with the highly-anticipated 4680 cells. Employees including Tesla’s Senior VP of Powertrain, Drew Baglino drives a 4680 Model Y.

Shortly after being released the 4680 Model Y was tested by The Kilowatts and they were able to test the charging rate of the vehicle. The results were impressive with the vehicle charging 270 miles in 52 minutes.

Tesla is building 4680-equipped Model Ys at Gigafactory Texas but mainly delivers 2170-equipped Model Ys to customers as the 4680 battery program has yet to fully ramp up.

Large-scale production of Tesla’s 4680 cells could begin by the end of the year. President and CEO of Panasonic, Kazuo Tadanobu, said that Tesla’s 4680 cells will enter mass production in Japan in May 2023. In preparation for mass production in 2023, Tesla has worked closely with suppliers like Panasonic to develop prototypes. This also aligns with Cybertruck production timelines, which is expected to begin production in mid-2023 and enter mass production at the end of 2023.

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Tesla Brings New Autopark and High Fidelity Park Assist to Vehicles with Ultrasonic Sensors [Video]

YouTube/AI DRIVR

On Sunday, Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) V12.3.6, the latest version of its FSD software. This update includes the highly anticipated new Autopark and High Fidelity Park Assist feature for additional vehicles. FSD v12.3.6 replaces v12.3.5 which had only been rolled out to a small portion of the fleet.

The new Autopark (tap to park) and High Fidelity Park Assist features are now available for vehicles with ultrasonic sensors (USS). Since October 2022, all Model 3 and Model Y vehicles no longer include ultrasonic sensors, instead relying solely on Tesla Vision to provide Autopilot, Park Assist, and Autopark features. However, the vision-based Autopark has been limited to the U.S. and Canada so far.

New Autopark

When driving at low speed, the new Autopark highlights potential parking spaces allowing the driver to pick their preferred spot. Tesla vehicles with ultrasonic sensors (USS) can now take advantage of the new Autopark feature, which is a significant improvement over the previous iteration.

Although the new Autopark feature is expanding to vehicles with USS, it appears to still be geographically limited to the U.S. and Canada. We expect Tesla to continue the feedback loop and release the feature in Europe and other regions in a future update.

Vehicles without USS outside of North America have never had Autopark of any form since they don’t support the older Autopark version that relies on USS and have yet to receive this latest revision of the feature.

For vehicles with the Intel-based infotainment unit, the visuals will look like the video below, where it doesn’t display a 3D environment of the vehicle’s surroundings. Instead, the visualization just highlights parking spaces available. However, the limitation for Intel vehicles is just in the visualization itself, the vehicle is just as aware of its surroundings as vehicles that display 3D renderings of objects on the screen.

Here is a demo of the new AutoPark w/ USS cars with Intel CPUs w/ FSD v12.3.6. Hope this is helpful. Full video coming soon! @nowteslafy @tezmeeinc @AIDRIVR @chazman @DirtyTesLa pic.twitter.com/b1kCYX2CXu

— ⚡️TechGeek Tesla 🔋⚡️ (@jonbbc) April 28, 2024

High Fidelity Park Assist

With Tesla update 2024.3.25 (FSD v12.3.6), Tesla is also releasing High Fidelity Park Assist features to vehicles with ultrasonic sensors. However, as initially suspected, it’s limited to vehicles with the most recent infotainment processor that includes the Ryzen chip (MCU 3). Unfortunately, Intel Atom based vehicles don’t include the 3D visuals of High Fidelity Park Assist.

The feature provides drivers with a 360-degree 3D reconstruction of their vehicles’ surroundings while parking while traveling at low speeds. It even accurately displays lane markers in parking lots helping drivers visualize the environment around them when parking. The feature was added as a late addition to Tesla’s 2023 holiday update. However, at the time, it was limited to vehicles without ultrasonic sensors (USS).

Tesla "High-fidelity park assist" system

pic.twitter.com/EEfO7PSABp

— TeslaZoa (@TeslaZoa) December 17, 2023

Vehicles With USS Have a Choice

For vehicles that have ultrasonic sensors, users will have a choice to either continue using their vehicle with USS sensors that display exact distances to objects or use the new High Fidelity Park Assist feature and forego the display of distances.

We were hoping that when Tesla finally released HiFi Park Assist to vehicles with USS, it would merge the two features and display the updated visuals with distance measurements, however, that is not the case in this update.

For owners with USS, the new Park Assist option is located under Controls > Autopilot and allows you to choose between “Standard” or “Tesla Vision.” Tesla Vision being the new HiFi Park Assist and Standard representing the USS version with arcs and measurements.

Tesla’s director of Autopilot, Ashok Elluswamy had previously set expectations and stated that HiFi Park Assist would “eventually” go to vehicles with ultrasonic sensors back in December 2023. The new Park Assist feature is available in various regions around the world, including North America and most of Europe.

Tesla continues to double down on vision and Musk revealed that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

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Tesla Starts Offering Enhanced Autopilot Subscription in China, FSD Coming Soon?

Tesla has started offering Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) in China via a subscription starting at 699 yuan per month — equivalent to about $98.5 USD. It’s the first time Tesla owners in the country will have access to features such as auto lane change, Autopark, Smart Summon, and others.

It’s not clear whether Tesla will begin to offer EAP as a subscription in other regions as well.

The move is seen as the first step towards the expansion of Tesla’s full self driving to China as other markets outside North America wait for the arrival of the FSD software. Yesterday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said the version 12 is “ready for supervised FSD in LHD countries” while RHD countries such as Australia, UK or Japan “will take a bit longer”.

FSD in China

China giant Baidu announced last Monday that it will provide all Tesla vehicles in China its latest version of Baidu Maps starting in May.

This week, Tesla celebrated its 10th anniversary in the Chinese Market where it has a total of 1.7 million owners — Tesla’s second largest market. Elon Musk recently tweeted that Tesla may soon offer full self-driving in China by saying “It may be possible very soon”.

FSD in Europe

On Friday, the Senior Advisor of the Swedish Transport Transportation, Rikard Fredriksson, shared on LinkedIn that he had been demoed the FSD technology in Germany with a Tesla employee. The moment marks the first official use of the assisted driving software in Europe. 

Impressive smooth and natural driving

LinkedIn Post by Rikard Fredriksson after the FSD Demo in Germany

In the recent earnings call, Elon Musk said Tesla has over 300 million miles that has been driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.

Tesla has recently reduced the pricing of its “Full Self-Driving” software in the US, from $12,000 to $8,000, and in Canada from CA$16,000 to $11,000. This price reduction follows a 50% cut in the subscription fee announced earlier this month.

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