Tesla will expand the use of the cabin camera for HOV lane use
Not a Tesla App
Tesla hacker @greentheonly recently decompiled Tesla's firmware for software update 2023.44.1 and found a few goodies under the hood.
Green found references to various media player improvements and an upcoming feature for that makes clever use of the in-cabin camera.
Shaka: Tesla's New Media Player
Tesla began switching to a web-based media player last year with Apple Music and has slowly migrated their audio services to the new player.
However, now Tesla is switching to a different open-sourced web player called Shaka.
While the design of the player is separate and is expected to remain the same, Shaka offers advances such as deep support for various audio and video codecs, including those with DRM.
Shaka isn't just an audio player and could be used for video playback as well. Shaka also offers support for subtitles, ads and more. It'd be interesting to see if Tesla is thinking about creating an audio service that is supported by ads and doesn't require premium connectivity. It's not clear which features Shaka features Tesla will leverage, but their software engineers are likely switching to Shaka for ease of development and better support.
Apple Podcasts
Another notable find is a mention of Apple Podcasts, which isn't currently available in Tesla's music services. Apple Podcasts is going to be its own individual app and isn't expected to require an Apple Music subscription. It'll allow users to easily listen to existing podcasts and sync their progress if they use the Podcasts app on iOS.
There are also planned updates around variable playback speeds for media content, including 1.25x, 1.5x, and 2x speed options. As Green indicated, this feature offers greater flexibility in how users consume media, allowing for a personalized listening experience. It remains unclear whether these playback speeds will be available across all platforms or solely for Apple Podcasts.
Automatically Determine Use of HOV Lanes
In an innovative application of in-car technology, this update suggests the use of the cabin camera to turn High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane usage automatically. This feature would be contingent on additional cabin camera permissions. However, if you want Autopilot, (or presumably Full Self Driving) to ride in the HOV lane, it will be able to determine its eligibility automatically.
Activating Autopilot for HOV lanes is currently a manual process. However, considering that eligibility for many states' HOV lanes depends on the vehicle's occupancy, it's smart to utilize the cabin camera to automatically count passengers.
Since some states offer HOV lane use to EVs, even if they don't meet the occupant threshold, this new feature will likely be an option. Tesla may simply change the HOV lane use option from a toggle to a new setting that offers three options - Always, Never, Auto (Based on Occupants).
While references to these enhancements were found in Tesla software update 2023.44, they're not available quite yet. However, considering that there are already references to these new features in a production update, it may not be long before these features are exposed.
Tesla's holiday update is right around the corner and could arrive as early as this week. Some of these features may be a present from Santa Musk himself.
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Less than ten days since the last FSD update, Tesla has started rolling out FSD v12.3.6. Not only does this update include improvements to FSD itself, but it also adds the new Autopark and High Fidelity Park Assist to vehicles with ultrasonic sensors.
As Tesla continues to ramp up its AI training capacity, the average number of miles driven on FSD continues to climb at an increased rate.
Computing Power
Last week, in the earnings call deck, Tesla revealed that it’s set to increase its core AI infrastructure capacity “in the coming months.” Tesla stated it has quadrupled its capacity since September 2023.
To further improve our end-to-end training capability, we will continue to increase our core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months. - Tesla
Musk said on Sunday that the company will spend “around $10B” throughout 2024 in “combined training and inference AI, the latter being primarily in car”. “Any company not spending at this level, and doing so efficiently, cannot compete,” he added.
Tesla's computing power has drastically increased
Expansion to China
In an unexpected 24-hour trip to China, Elon Musk visited Beijing to meet with Premier Li Qiang to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and permission to transfer driving data overseas. Since Tesla uses fleet data to continuously improve FSD, being able to use data gathered in and outside of China will be crucial to its continued improvement.
Elon Musk meeting with Premier Li Qiang today in China.
On the same day, Tesla models produced at Giga Shanghai were listed among the EVs that meet China's data security requirements for smart cars, an important hurdle for Tesla to surpass.
When Musk was asked on X about Tesla releasing FSD in China, Musk simply said “It may be possible very soon.”
Regarding additional markets such as Europe and Australia, Musk said he believes that v12 is “ready for supervised FSD in LHD countries” while RHD like the UK or Australia “will take a bit longer”.
Internal FSD Is 3 to 6 Months Ahead
Earlier this month, Tesla disclosed that the team knows “roughly” how the software will perform in “3 to 6 months”. He added that it takes “a few months to fix those bugs and complete safety tests” before releasing the version to the Tesla employees and then to the general public.
Major FSD Updates Coming
On X, Musk teased that the next major update to FSD will be v12.4, saying “it’s awesome,” and that it’s “another big jump in capabilities.” Musk said that Tesla’s computing constraint has been much improved, and likely may be a factor in this further being another big improvement.
In mid-March, Elon Musk announced that Tesla will reintroduce Smart Summon and Autopark to its vehicles. Tesla has now delivered on the Autopark promise, but we’re still waiting on the improved Smart Summon feature. It’s possible we’ll see in FSD v12.4.
On Sunday, Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) V12.3.6, the latest version of its FSD software. This update includes the highly anticipated new Autopark and High Fidelity Park Assist feature for additional vehicles. FSD v12.3.6 replaces v12.3.5 which had only been rolled out to a small portion of the fleet.
The new Autopark (tap to park) and High Fidelity Park Assist features are now available for vehicles with ultrasonic sensors (USS). Since October 2022, all Model 3 and Model Y vehicles no longer include ultrasonic sensors, instead relying solely on Tesla Vision to provide Autopilot, Park Assist, and Autopark features. However, the vision-based Autopark has been limited to the U.S. and Canada so far.
New Autopark
When driving at low speed, the new Autopark highlights potential parking spaces allowing the driver to pick their preferred spot. Tesla vehicles with ultrasonic sensors (USS) can now take advantage of the new Autopark feature, which is a significant improvement over the previous iteration.
Although the new Autopark feature is expanding to vehicles with USS, it appears to still be geographically limited to the U.S. and Canada. We expect Tesla to continue the feedback loop and release the feature in Europe and other regions in a future update.
Vehicles without USS outside of North America have never had Autopark of any form since they don’t support the older Autopark version that relies on USS and have yet to receive this latest revision of the feature.
For vehicles with the Intel-based infotainment unit, the visuals will look like the video below, where it doesn’t display a 3D environment of the vehicle’s surroundings. Instead, the visualization just highlights parking spaces available. However, the limitation for Intel vehicles is just in the visualization itself, the vehicle is just as aware of its surroundings as vehicles that display 3D renderings of objects on the screen.
With Tesla update 2024.3.25 (FSD v12.3.6), Tesla is also releasing High Fidelity Park Assist features to vehicles with ultrasonic sensors. However, as initially suspected, it’s limited to vehicles with the most recent infotainment processor that includes the Ryzen chip (MCU 3). Unfortunately, Intel Atom based vehicles don’t include the 3D visuals of High Fidelity Park Assist.
The feature provides drivers with a 360-degree 3D reconstruction of their vehicles’ surroundings while parking while traveling at low speeds. It even accurately displays lane markers in parking lots helping drivers visualize the environment around them when parking. The feature was added as a late addition to Tesla’s 2023 holiday update. However, at the time, it was limited to vehicles without ultrasonic sensors (USS).
For vehicles that have ultrasonic sensors, users will have a choice to either continue using their vehicle with USS sensors that display exact distances to objects or use the new High Fidelity Park Assist feature and forego the display of distances.
We were hoping that when Tesla finally released HiFi Park Assist to vehicles with USS, it would merge the two features and display the updated visuals with distance measurements, however, that is not the case in this update.
For owners with USS, the new Park Assist option is located under Controls > Autopilot and allows you to choose between “Standard” or “Tesla Vision.” Tesla Vision being the new HiFi Park Assist and Standard representing the USS version with arcs and measurements.
Tesla’s director of Autopilot, Ashok Elluswamy had previously set expectations and stated that HiFi Park Assist would “eventually” go to vehicles with ultrasonic sensors back in December 2023. The new Park Assist feature is available in various regions around the world, including North America and most of Europe.
Tesla continues to double down on vision and Musk revealed that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.
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![Tesla Brings New Autopark and High Fidelity Park Assist to Vehicles with Ultrasonic Sensors [Video]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/img/containers/article_images/2024/high-fidelity-park-assist.jpg/e251c440bdf5d0f742e1993e1610afe8.jpg)
