The Cybertruck will have a camera in the center of the front bumper
Sofiaan/Twitter
The Tesla community comes through again. As soon as invited guests started showing up at the company’s annual Investor Day, new images of the latest Cybertruck prototype started hitting social media. For the last couple of weeks, the highly anticipated vehicle has been spotted in the wild, and we’ve dissected every frame of images posted online. But now we have close-up, clear pictures that reveal far more than previously known.
Front-to-Back Tour
Front Bumper Camera
Let’s start from the front and work our way back. We begin with the front bumper, which has a camera in the center. This is a big find. We know Hardware 4 is starting to show up in some vehicles, and it allows for up to 12 cameras. The new camera location may have something to do with the removal of the ultrasonic sensors. However, it's hard to say how useful this camera location will be as the front bumper takes the brunt of bugs, snow, slush, and rain.
Frunk Opening
The front end offers a bit of a mystery for the frunk. Some speculation is that it’s not just the hood, but part of the bumper would come up with the frunk. But really, you have to wonder why anyone would need a frunk with all of this space.
Giant Air Suspension Cylinders
The Cybertruck had massive air suspension cylinders
MatthewDR/Twitter
Moving back, we find gigantic air suspension cylinders. We’ve reported on videos showing Cybertruck both high and low. These cans suggest that it has the ability to go over almost any obstacle.
Windshield Wiper
Further back, the next one is hard to miss. The biggest windshield wiper ever produced (slight exaggeration) still exists. Perhaps Tesla has not found a suitable solution to a problem identified by Elon Musk. He has tweeted that the wiper troubles him the most and “No easy solution. Deployable wiper that stows in front trunk would be ideal, but complex.”
New Cybertruck Steering Wheel
The Cybertruck was displayed with a circular yoke steering wheel
TeslaSynopsis/Twitter
Let’s move inside the cockpit. The first thing many investors noticed was the new steering wheel design. It’s not a yoke, it’s not a circle but a circular yoke"a sort of rectangular-shaped wheel complete with the usual scroll buttons. Like the Model 3 and Model Y, one screen is in the middle of the dashboard. But this screen looks bigger than the ones found in the other models. Could it be the 17" screen that's on the Model S and Model X? The dashboard appears to be some sort of fabric, possibly Alcantara, instead of the marble look that appeared in previous prototypes.
Rear Screen and Rear Seats
The Cybertruck on display had a rear screen similar to the Model S
TeslaHype/Twitter
Jump into the backseat, and we find another screen, which appears to be the same size and location as the one in the Model X and Model S. The rear seats fold up but don’t fold down, confirming what was speculated a few months ago. Leaked images of the mega cast revealed the rumored midgate did not make it to production. The thought was the midgate, combined with folding rear seats, would make for an excellent camping experience or allow long items to be transported.
Roof Rack Rails
But it will not be difficult to transport whatever you need with Cybertruck. It looks like there are roof rack slots and an impressive box that seems incredibly rigid. On the side edge of the box, it looks like a switch to adjust the truck's rear suspension up or down. This would be handy to line up a trailer.
The sign near the Cybertruck noted that this is the Beta version of Cybertruck. Production is scheduled to start in the summer, with a full ramp-up starting next year.
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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.
