Tesla requested more time for details to be kept confidential, and in doing so, everyone now knows something is up. A document dated November 18, 2022, appeared on Twitter on December 6. It’s from Tesla Inc. and addressed to the Federal Communications Commission. In the brief letter, Certification Engineer Cindy Li requests a 60-day extension of a previous agreement to keep a device secret. This mysterious letter set the Tesla sphere on fire with speculation to find out what is the secret device.
All we know from the letter is that model number 1541584 includes a user manual, internal photos, external photos, and test setup photos. Whatever this device is, it was going to be made public by the FCC on December 7, 2022. Tesla asked for an extension because the device will not be ready until mid-January 2023. The company wants to “avoid any unnecessary disclosure and competitive harm before our product launch…”
The poster of the letter, Twitter user @Taka87 reached out to well-known Tesla hacker @greentheonly, for some insight. The response: … something potentially major planned for mid-January which is just a bit over a month away... Like something that coincides with a sensor suite change.
That opens the door for the return of radar, which was removed last year and/or ultrasonic sensors, which Tesla just scrapped in October when it made the call to go completely with Tesla Vision. At that time, Tesla said in a statement: With today's software, this approach gives Autopilot high-definition spatial positioning, longer range visibility and the ability to identify and differentiate between objects. As with many Tesla features, our occupancy network will continue to improve rapidly over time.
There has also been a lot of speculation about HW4, where a high-resolution radar is believed to be part of the full self-driving sensor suite. HW4 goes as far back as the 2021 A.I. Day when Elon Musk said a new FSD computer would come out with the Cybertruck. This upgrade is now reportedly being developed by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC). It is expected to be much more powerful than the current hardware by as much as four times.
Elon has also previously commented on HD radar, saying "A very high-resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist. I mean vision with high-res radar would be better than pure vision."
An unidentified part, closely resembling a new radar was found on Tesla's Parts Catalog back in September by @GreenTheOnly. This mysterious item was marked but suspiciously not given a name, a part number or a description. However, given Green's experience with the inner workings of these vehicles, Green believes it is a new Tesla radar. In a follow-up tweet, he doubled down on his stance, saying the part matches the high-resolution radar Tesla registered with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in June.
Fans recently spotted multiple Model 3 vehicles that had parts of the front and rear of the vehicle covered up. If Tesla is planning to add HD radar or change some of the vehicle's sensor suite, these vehicles may be testing exactly this.
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With Tesla’s first major expansion of the Robotaxi Geofence now complete and operational, they’ve been hard at work with validation in new locations - and some are quite the drive from the current Austin Geofence.
Validation fleet vehicles have been spotted operating in a wider perimeter around the city, from rural roads in the west end to the more complex area closer to the airport. Tesla mentioned during their earnings call that the Robotaxi has already completed 7,000 miles in Austin, and it will expand its area of operation to roughly 10 times what it is now. This lines up with the validation vehicles we’ve been tracking around Austin.
Based on the spread of the new sightings, the potential next geofence could cover a staggering 450 square miles - a tenfold increase from the current service area of roughly 42 square miles. You can check this out in our map below with the sightings we’re tracking.
If Tesla decides to expand into these new areas, it would represent a tenfold increase over their current geofence, matching Tesla’s statement. The new area would cover approximately 10% of the 4,500-square-mile Austin metropolitan area. If Tesla can offer Robotaxi services in that entire area, it would prove they can tackle just about any city in the United States.
From Urban Core to Rural Roads
The locations of the validation vehicles show a clear intent to move beyond the initial urban and suburban core and prepare the Robotaxi service for a much wider range of uses.
In the west, validation fleet vehicles have been spotted as far as Marble Falls - a much more rural environment that features different road types, higher speed limits, and potentially different challenges.
In the south, Tesla has been expanding towards Kyle, which is part of the growing Austin-San Antonio suburban corridor spanning Highway 35. San Antonio is only 80 miles (roughly a 90-minute drive) away, and could easily become part of the existing Robotaxi area if Tesla obtains regulatory approval there.
In the East, we haven’t spotted any new validation vehicles. This is likely because Tesla’s validation vehicles originate from Giga Texas, which is located East of Austin. We won’t really know if Tesla is expanding in this direction until they start pushing past Giga Texas and toward Houston.
Finally, there have been some validation vehicles spotted just North of the new expanded boundaries, meaning that Tesla isn’t done in that direction either. This direction consists of the largest suburban areas of Austin, which have so far not been serviced by any form of autonomous vehicle.
Rapid Scaling
This new, widespread validation effort confirms what we already know. Tesla is pushing for an intensive period of public data gathering and system testing in a new area, right before conducting geofence expansions. The sheer scale of this new validation zone tells us that Tesla isn’t taking this slowly - the next step is going to be a great leap instead, and they essentially confirmed this during this Q&A session on the recent call. The goal is clearly to bring the entire Austin Metropolitan area into the Robotaxi Network.
While the previous expansion showed off just how Tesla can scale the network, this new phase of validation testing is a demonstration of just how fast they can validate and expand their network. The move to validate across rural, suburban, and urban areas simultaneously shows their confidence in these new Robotaxi FSD builds.
Eventually, all these improvements from Robotaxi will make their way to customer FSD builds sometime in Q3 2025, so there is a lot to look forward to.
For years, the progress of Tesla’s FSD has been measured by smoother turns, better lane centering, and more confident unprotected left turns. But as the system matures, a new, more subtle form of intelligence is emerging - one that shifts its attention to the human nuances of navigating roads. A new video posted to X shows the most recent FSD build, V13.2.9, demonstrating this in a remarkable real-world scenario.
Toll Booth Magic
In the video, a Model Y running FSD pulls up to a toll booth and smoothly comes to a stop, allowing the driver to handle payment. The car waits patiently as the driver interacts with the attendant. Then, at the precise moment the toll booth operator finishes the transaction and says “Have a great day”, the vehicle starts moving, proceeding through the booth - all without any input from the driver.
If you notice, there’s no gate here at this toll booth. This interaction all happened naturally with FSD.
While the timing was perfect, the FSD wasn’t listening to the conversation for clues (maybe one day, with Grok?) The reality, as explained by Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, is even more impressive.
It can see the transaction happening using the repeater & pillar cameras. Hence FSD proceeds on its own when the transaction is complete 😎
FSD is simply using the cameras on the side of the vehicle to watch the exchange between the driver and attendant. The neural network has been trained on enough data that it can visually recognize the conclusion of a transaction - the exchange of money or a card and the hands pulling away - and understands that this is the trigger to proceed.
The Bigger Picture
This capability is far more significant than just a simple party trick. FSD is gaining the ability to perceive and navigate a world built for humans in the most human-like fashion possible.
If FSD can learn what a completed toll transaction looks like, it’s an example of the countless other complex scenarios it’ll be able to handle in the future. This same visual understanding could be applied to navigating a fast-food drive-thru, interacting with a parking garage attendant, passing through a security checkpoint, or boarding a ferry or vehicle train — all things we thought that would come much later.
These human-focused interactions will eventually become even more useful, as FSD becomes ever more confident in responding to humans on the road, like when a police officer tells a vehicle to go a certain direction, or a construction worker flags you through a site. These are real-world events that happen every day, and it isn’t surprising to see FSD picking up on the subtleties and nuances of human interaction.
This isn’t a pre-programmed feature for a specific toll booth. It is an emergent capability of the end-to-end AI neural nets. By learning from millions of videos across billions of miles, FSD is beginning to build a true contextual understanding of the world. The best part - with a 10x context increase on its way, this understanding will grow rapidly and become far more powerful.
These small, subtle moments of intelligence are the necessary steps to a truly robust autonomous system that can handle the messy, unpredictable nature of human society.
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