Yesterday Tesla announced that their CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn would depart
Tesla
In a surprising turn of events, Tesla's CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn, known to many as the 'Master of Coin', has announced his resignation. Like any business, small or large, people come and go. But this isn't an average person at a normal company. Kirkhorn was deep in the trenches from the early days of the little start-up electric car company, and his departure leaves us only to speculate what happened and what happens now both at Tesla and for Kirkhorn.
Tesla Today and into the Future
The short answer to what happens now is Kirkhorn will stay on until the end of the year; however, his responsibilities have been handed over to Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's Chief Accounting Officer since 2019 after joining the company in 2017 following the purchase of SolarCity.
Kirkhorn is going out with his head held high and still a true believer in Tesla's vision, as he is sticking around for four more months to help with the transition. In his LinkedIn post, which he only publicly posts about once a year, he said:
Being a part of this company is a special experience and I’m extremely proud of the work we’ve done together since I joined over 13 years ago.
Reason for Leaving is Unknown
There are no clues about what is next for Kirkhorn or why he is leaving. So, that would lead many to believe there must've been an issue at the top, Elon Musk. While that is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, both men seemed to be playing nice on social media. Kirkhorn stated on Linkedin, "I want to thank the talented, passionate, and hard-working employees at Tesla, who have accomplished things many thought not possible. I also want to thank Elon for his leadership and optimism, which has inspired so many people."
Musk posted on X.com, "I would like to thank Zach Kirkhorn for his many contributions to Tesla over the course of 13 often difficult years. Much appreciated, and best wishes for the next stage of his career."
Kirkhorn replaced Deepak Ahuja who left Tesla in 2019. Ahuja had been in the CFO role since 2010 the same year Kirhorn joined Tesla. Kirkhorn's rise through the ranks was both meteoric and pivotal. Serving in various capacities, including Senior Manager, Director, and Senior Director, he assumed the role of CFO in March 2019.
The Succession Plan
Succession at Tesla has been a concern for years, and it should be. We saw what happened when Musk bought Twitter and split his attention - the stock sank. We can only imagine what was happening behind the scenes. Still, when Musk committed to putting his attention back to Tesla, he implemented a hiring freeze and said all major personal decisions had to go through him.
Kirkhorn would've been on everyone's bingo card as a shortlist candidate to be the next CEO at Tesla, as his impact on the company's trajectory is indisputable. During his tenure, Kirkhorn played an essential role in transforming Tesla from a company fraught with losses to a consistently profitable enterprise. His expertise has been instrumental in Tesla's first quarterly profit, achieving a market valuation of over $1 trillion and strategizing the launch of products like Model 3 and the anticipated Cybertruck.
Kirkhorn's dedication to the company was undoubtedly monumental and likely far bigger than we will ever know, but he is replaceable. Just as we saw with the departure of Andrej Karpathy, the leader of the Full Self-Driving department, the company will continue. It's been a highly sought-after company for many bright minds to work at, and that kind of talent pool will help when the big players leave. But Tesla still has to come up with an answer for the succession plan for Elon Musk.
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The map above compares Tesla's current geofence with their potential expansion in yellow.
Not a Tesla App
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.
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.
In the map below, the blue icons are sightings of Tesla validation vehicles, while the yellow map area represents their potential expansion. The map overlays Tesla’s phases 1 and 2 and compares them to Waymo’s first two phases. You can toggle each one by tapping the icon at the top left and choosing which geofences you’d like to view.
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.
![No Driver Needed: Tesla FSD Stops at Toll, Waits for Driver to Pay and Takes Off Again [VIDEO]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/img/containers/article_images/fsd-beta/fsd-toll-booth.webp/57e008aff60c6c1e998e304eca200cda/fsd-toll-booth.jpg)
