Tesla Releases Major Update to FSD Beta, v11.3.1 Is Now Available for Some

Tesla has publicly released FSD Beta v11.3.1 to some owners

Tesla

After many months of waiting, Tesla has finally released its next major update to FSD Beta. Early this morning Tesla released FSD Beta v11.3.1 to some of its customers.

Most of the customers that received this latest beta were part of Tesla's initial 1,000 public beta testers. This means that only a fraction of a percentage of FSD Beta users have access to this latest beta.

According to the NHTSA, Tesla now has over 362,000 owners who have FSD Beta installed on their vehicles.

Per Elon Musk's previous comments on Twitter, Tesla expects to release bug fixes to this beta before releasing this beta out more widely. He expects FSD Beta v11.3.2 to be the one that goes out widely to Tesla's customers.

Big Improvements with 'OTA Recall'

Another major change that we're seeing with FSD Beta v11.3.1 is the inclusion of fixes that address the NHTSA's concerns with the beta.

The NHTSA brought up several concerns with Tesla's FSD Beta in mid-February and Tesla paused the release of FSD Beta to new owners until the issues were addressed.

However, Tesla wasted no time addressing these issues by including fixes in FSD Beta 11.3.1 less than a month later.

The fixes address several safety issues, including the vehicle being more cautious when approaching yellow lights. According to the release notes FSD Beta will now take more things into account before going through a yellow light; considering things such as the amount of time needed to stop, time needed to drive through the intersection, the position of the vehicle, and the amount of time before the light turns red.

This is certainly impressive, and while it's essentially what we as humans do when encountering a yellow light,  the precision and speed that FSD Beta can likely calculate these values will likely be far better than a human's.

Another large fix addresses how the vehicle sets its speed and handles speed limit signs. Previously the vehicle would determine its speed based on the speed limit and the driver's chosen speed offset. However, the problem was that the vehicle would only adjust its speed once it had passed a new speed limit sign, causing it to be over the speed limit for a certain period.

With this update, FSD Beta will now adjust the vehicle's speed before reaching a detected speed limit sign. The vehicle will also be more assertive in slowing down if the new speed limit sign is much lower than the vehicle's current speed.

Voice Drive-Notes

With this beta Tesla has included 'voice drive-notes.' This appeared to be Tesla's replacement for the snapshot button, although early testers appear to have both, the snapshot button and voice drive-notes. Upon a disengagement, the driver is presented with a chance to provide more detailed feedback on the disengagement through an audio recording.

Ironically, this feature doesn't appear in Tesla's FSD Beta v11.3.1 release notes like it did in v11.3, but according to beta testers the feature is there.

Expanded Automatic Emergency Braking

One of the features we were excited to see mentioned in Tesla's v11.3 release notes were improvements to Tesla's Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB).

Tesla's improvements to AEB went beyond the standard functionality, adding the ability to detect and react to vehicles that cross the car's path or steal the right of way, such as a vehicle that runs a red light or cuts off the Tesla.

According to Tesla, nearly half of the collisions of this nature would be avoided with this newly expanded system. From Tesla's release notes in FSD Beta v11.3, Tesla stated:

Expanded Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) to handle vehicles that cross ego's path. This includes cases where other vehicles run their red light or turn across ego's path, stealing the right-of-way. Replay of previous collisions of this type suggests that 49% of the events would be mitigated by the new behavior. This improvement is now active in both manual driving and autopilot operation.

This feature is also not mentioned in Tesla's release notes for v11.3.1 so it's unclear whether it's just not mentioned like Tesla's voice drive-notes, or if the feature is not included in this update. It's certainly understandable if Tesla needs to test it further, as v11.3 was an internal-only beta and not all features are expected to be in the following public release.

Different Release Notes

There may be other differences between FSD Beta v11.3.1 and v11.3 since the release notes vary quite drastically. However, it's not clear if Tesla simply chose to highlight different features in the release notes of the public release.

Release to All

As with most Tesla updates, expect this update to roll out slowly as Tesla closely monitors it. Depending on issues discovered, Tesla may either expand the update to more owners or choose to address issues before distributing it further.

In the past, it has taken up to a month before the latest FSD Beta is available to all available owners. Before sure to check out the release notes for FSD Beta v11.3.1 to see everything that's included.

Tesla Update 2025.20 Tear Down Reveals Grok Personalities and Icons

@greentheonly on X

While most automakers are adding basic and un-integrated AI assistants to their vehicles, Tesla appears to be working hand-in-hand with xAI to build out an entire cast of characters for in-vehicle Grok. In the latest dive into Tesla’s firmware, Tesla hacker @greentheonly uncovered a few new details about the upcoming Grok feature.

This discovery, part of a larger batch of changes found in Tesla update 2025.20, also offers a hint at the hardware required for the Grok.

A Dozen Groks

While we knew from previous firmware teardowns that Tesla was adding various Grok personalities to the vehicle UI, this update introduces a new one called Language Tutor, which may allow users to learn and practice a new language. 

These are the different personas that will be included in Grok:

• Argumentative

• Assistant

• Conspiracy

• Doctor

• Kids’ Stories

• Kids’ Trivia Games

• Meditation

• Motivation

• Romantic

• Sexy

• Storyteller

• Therapist

• Language Tutor

• and the Grok Classic - Unhinged Mode

Release Date

Icons for these personalities have been added to the firmware for the first time, leading us to think Tesla is getting close to releasing the feature. However, even after the feature is developed and included in vehicle software, Tesla may only enable it selectively — such as for select employees for testing.

Grok is expected to be one of the largest vehicle features added via a software update, so it’ll be a big deal when it’s finally released. While we know more or less what to expect from Grok, what we don’t know is about vehicle requirements or whether it’ll require a subscription beyond Premium Connectivity.

Grok Requirements

While subscriptions required are anyone’s guess, vehicle requirements may be a little clearer now, thanks to Green’s discovery that Grok is only being added to AMD-based vehicle software builds.

Unfortunately, this likely means that older, Intel-based vehicles will not receive Grok support, at least for the time being. When Tesla introduced a voice assistant in China, they also started off with AMD-only support but later added Intel support, so it’s possible that the same could happen with Grok.

Energy Saving

Green also found a new undocumented navigation feature in 2025.20.3. This one focuses on leveraging Tesla’s vast amounts of data in an interesting way and offers drivers proactive advice to save energy on a well-traveled route. 

In the Energy App, your vehicle will display, “This route is typically driven at X mph. Slow down by Y mph to save Z% for the rest of this trip.’ 

As you can see in the photo below, Tesla recognizes that vehicles typically drive at 66 mph on the route being driven and offers the driver the option to go five mph slower to save 1% of range. While this example doesn’t provide much incentive to slow down, it could be useful for someone with a low state of charge or if the savings are more significant.

The new line in the Energy App

Not a Tesla App

In the future, Tesla could even use this, alongside the road surface data they’re gathering, to help plan routes for Robotaxi and Unsupervised FSD.

Follow

Follow

Follow

NHTSA to Streamline Approvals for Control-Free Vehicles Like Tesla’s Cybercab

Not a Tesla App

In a letter to industry, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is overhauling its approvals process for vehicles designed without human controls.

The change addresses a regulatory bottleneck that has slowed down American companies like Tesla from deploying purpose-built Robotaxis, rather than relying on using traditional vehicles with steering wheels and pedals. The policy shift is outlined in a letter posted to the NHTSA’s website, which you can find here.

Reducing Approvals From Years to Months

Under the existing rules today, any vehicle that is built without a steering wheel or brake pedals must receive a special exemption from federal safety standards.

Obtaining exemptions for a particular vehicle was a time-consuming process for both the companies requesting exemptions and the NHTSA. The process was often a black box—nobody knew when an exemption might be granted, and approvals could take years.

The NHTSA, under the new administration’s guidelines for autonomous vehicle development, is now committed to streamlining this process. The agency will be implementing a new, faster approach immediately for receiving exemptions for autonomous vehicles without standard controls. The NHTSA expects decisions on exemption requests to be determined within months rather than years. 

Accelerating the Cybercab

This change has massive implications for Tesla, which is banking on the production of the simplified and easy-to-maintain purpose-built Cybercab. The Cybercab is developed from the ground up as an autonomous Robotaxi and will be one of the key beneficiaries of this move by the NHTSA.

Knowing that a final design won't be caught in a multi-year regulatory limbo provides a level of certainty that has been missing. It allows Tesla to confidently plan the manufacturing, development, and deployment processes without worrying whether the project will get stuck in regulatory approvals.

According to the letter, the agency will publish its improved instructions for the streamlined process "shortly." With Tesla already having begun Cybercab pre-production and the goals for its deployment as soon as late 2026, there’s still a lot to be done to make autonomy a part of Tesla’s new sustainable abundance mission statement.

Follow

Follow

Follow