FSD Beta 11.4.6 Starts Roll Out, Musk Says V12 Is “Mind-Blowing”

Tesla's FSD Beta software version 11.4.6 is now available to some customers

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Tesla’s next FSD Beta update, 11.4.6 started going out to customers earlier this week, but there's a lot to discuss around Tesla's FSD software these days.

FSD Beta 11.4.6, which Tesla began pushing to employees just last week, has received positive criticism from public testers who’ve received the update. Tesla owner and influencer, Whole Mars Catalog, shared videos on YouTube showing FSD improvements, alongside commentary at locations where the software previously struggled.

All FSD Beta, All the Time

Tesla recently started including FSD Beta in all of its software updates. However, the version included is a slightly older, more stable build, known as FSD Beta 11.3.6. Having the software baked into every update means that all eligible customers can now easily activate FSD Beta simply by subscribing or buying Tesla's FSD feature. There's no longer a need to wait for Tesla to push a separate update for FSD Beta. Of course, owners will still need to be in a supported region (currently U.S., Canada) and have a supported vehicle, which unfortunately still excludes hardware 4.0 as of now.

Older FSD Beta users, on the other hand, have Tesla's older updates, version 2023.7.x, which doesn't include many of Tesla's newest features, such as the refreshed Spotify app. However, these older builds includes a newer version of FSD Beta, such as 11.4.4 or this newest build, FSD Beta 11.4.6.

Musk Says FSD V12 is “Mind-Blowing”

Tesla is working on the next milestone for FSD Beta, and in typical Musk optimism, Musk is calling this v12 alpha version, "mind-blowing."

Tesla makes significant architectural changes with each major update to FSD Beta, and v12 will be no different.

With FSD Beta v11, Tesla finally merged the city and highway Autopilot versions, which has resulted in a much smoother Autopilot highway experience, although some believe it's not as consistent or reliable. However, that's not completely unexpected with the major changes included in v11. As FSD Beta v11 matures, we'll likely gain the consistency we've become used to on our highway drives.

FSD v12 is being reserved for when the vehicle can run entirely on AI from “video in to control out,” according to Musk. This will mean that AI will finally take control of the vehicle, from steering to braking and acceleration.

Musk has a track record of being overly optimistic, but the improvements the FSD team has made in the last couple years are nothing short of amazing.

FSD v12 will also be when Musk expects FSD to come out of beta.

Optimus: Powered by Tesla AI

Tesla’s vehicles are its core product, but the company is also building Optimus, a human-like robot that will replace monotonous and dangerous tasks.

According to Tesla's Autopilot lead, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla is building out its vehicle and robot software simultaneously. Many of the neural networks Tesla uses today are shared between their vehicles and Optimus, according to Elluswamy.

The closer Tesla gets to solving FSD, the closer they'll be to solving a lot of other problems. As Elon Musk has said, Tesla will likely need to solve Artificial General Intelligence in order to solve FSD. Although we're likely years away from that happening, the Tesla team isn't shying away from the challenge.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

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Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

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Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

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You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

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One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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