The Tesla holiday update is due sometime before December 25. If you’re new to the Tesla world, the holiday update is often the best of the year, with significant leaps and some surprises. Here is some history of these updates.
In Part One of our wish list, we looked at navigation enhancements, a popular ask on a Reddit post gathering ideas for the Holiday Update. The list contains more than 150 things Tesla owners have on their wish list for the 2023 holiday update. In Part two, we’re looking at Autonomy and what is next for FSD. We already know that version 12 is being tested by employees; therefore, there is a chance that it may be ready for this year’s holiday update.
FSD Visualizations for Non-FSD Cars
One of the most intriguing asks is the extension of Full Self-Driving visualizations to non-FSD Tesla vehicles. This feature, which provides a detailed visualization of the car's surroundings and its interpretation of the driving environment, is currently exclusive to vehicles with FSD.
Expanding this feature to the broader Tesla fleet would enhance driver awareness and be an educational tool, illustrating how Tesla's AI perceives and navigates the road. It's a step towards demystifying autonomous technology and fostering trust in AI-assisted driving.
Autopark: Precision and Reliability
Autopark, a feature enabling a Tesla to park itself in parallel and perpendicular spots, is due for an upgrade. The Tesla community has voiced a need for increased precision and reliability in this feature. An enhanced Autopark would mean a more confident use of this function in tighter urban parking spaces, reducing driver anxiety and potentially leading to fewer parking-related accidents. It’s not just about convenience; it’s about augmenting the driver’s capabilities with precision-engineered AI.
Actually Smart Summon
An enhanced version of Smart Summon, which allows a Tesla to navigate a parking lot and come to the driver, would also be a nice present this year. While already a glimpse into the future of vehicles, its enhancement could see increased situational awareness and smoother navigation in complex parking scenarios. Imagine summoning your Tesla in a crowded mall parking lot, and it arrives flawlessly, navigating around obstacles and pedestrians. It's a feature that combines convenience with a showcase of cutting-edge AI technology. Then, of course, there is reverse summon.
Tesla's 2023 Holiday Update promises to be a good one. With FSD v12 on the horizon and the possibility of some autonomy upgrades, Santa can put his sleigh on FSD and relax. Part three will examine the entertainment and connectivity updates the Tesla community wants.
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xAI’s Grok AI Model has been receiving rapid updates, similar to Tesla’s FSD. After waiting for a major update, the latest version—Grok 3—is set to launch with a live demo on February 17th.
Grok 3 is supposed to bring big improvements, as xAI has changed its approach to training the Large Language Model (LLM). Unlike many other LLMs, Grok can access real-time information and adapt its answers based on the latest news and discussions happening on X’s platform, making it more suited for current events or breaking news.
At the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Elon also mentioned that Grok 3 is already outperforming its competitors, so there is a lot to look forward to. Let’s dig into the new capabilities and then see why they matter to Tesla drivers.
New Capabilities
This time, Grok is set to feature self-correction, reinforcement learning, and synthetic datasets. Self-correction allows Grok to identify and fix its own mistakes, with human oversight ensuring that the process is guided. This helps refine Grok’s future responses as part of its ongoing training.
Reinforcement learning, meanwhile, rewards or penalizes the AI based on its actions. When it performs correctly, it receives a reward, reinforcing that behavior; penalties reduce the likelihood of undesirable actions. Combined with new synthetic datasets, xAI can accelerate Grok’s training process, much like how Tesla’s AI team has been refining FSD. There’s definitely a lot of overlap between the two.
Voice Support
Grok is one of the few remaining publicly available AIs that doesn’t have a live-voice mode. Its competitors - including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT - both have live voice response and reasoning and will also integrate and hook into 3rd-party services over voice.
Musk has previously stated that all Tesla vehicles will eventually receive Grok as a Smart Voice Assistant—one far more capable than the current voice command system.
Tonight’s demo, at 8 pm PT is expected to be live, potentially showing off the integration into Tesla vehicles. Millions of existing Tesla vehicles worldwide could soon take advantage of Grok as a voice assistant. There’s even a rumor of a wake word for the feature — potentially Grok.
Grok’s real-time capabilities mean you could ask it to add a stop to your route for food at the highest-rated local restaurant with minimal wait. Grok would gather and process that information while your car drives itself, then update your route, allowing FSD to take you directly there. You’ll also be able to ask general knowledge questions, such as the weather for tomorrow or the price of Tesla stock.
Controlling the vehicle will also be greatly upgraded. While the current voice command system can handle simple tasks like “Open Charge Port” or “Turn on Defrost,” the new system should be able to handle more complex requests and allow drivers to ask things in a more natural way.
We expect to find out more about Grok in Teslas tonight. Even if the demo tonight doesn’t specifically mention Tesla, a look at Grok’s new abilities could be a first look at what we’ll soon be able to experience in our Teslas.
At the Tesla Q4 2024 Earnings Call, we found out that Tesla now has a firm date and set location for the first deployment of its Robotaxi fleet. Now, several of Tesla's executives have re-iterated that deployment date and location in several different places.
Like most Tesla fans and investors, we’re excited to see Cybercab make its official debut on the streets of Austin, Texas, sometime in June. That’s potentially less than 100 days away - but who’s counting, right?
Elon Confirms
Elon Musk confirmed on X that Tesla is still on track to launch autonomous ride-hailing (Robotaxi) in Austin this June. Plus, they’re also working on rolling it out to even more cities in the United States by the end of the year.
Tesla’s benchmark for expanding deployments is ensuring that Robotaxi safety surpasses the average human driver by a wide margin. Based on the latest Vehicle Safety Report, Supervised FSD is already making strong progress, outperforming the average driver by 10.5 times—a full order of magnitude.
Franz Confirms
Franz Von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Head of Vehicle Design, also confirmed that Tesla will be offering Cybercab rides in Austin starting in June. What’s key here is that he confirmed the presence of Cybercabs finally deploying - it won’t be driverless Model Ys or Model 3s - it’ll be the Cybercab.
NEWS: Franz says Tesla will start offering Cybercab rides in Austin, Texas this June.
“Starting in June we’ll be having Cybercabs rolling around; That’ll be the technology that feels like the future but is happening today.”
That means an autonomy-first vehicle without a driver’s seat, steering wheel, or pedals will be on the road and driving people from point to point. Major autonomy competitors like Waymo use heavily modified EVs that still have seats and vehicle controls intact. An autonomy-first design increases passenger room and storage while also improving efficiency by reducing vehicle weight.
Are you planning on making your way down to Austin to experience the Robotaxi experience first-hand or are you planning on waiting until it’s deployed in a city near you? Let us know your thoughts in our forums or social media.
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