Christmas came early for some Tesla owners thanks to the new High-fidelity Park Assist that was part of the Holiday Update. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Autopilot Software Director, took to X to show off Tesla’s latest technology, a complete overhaul of the parking experience, blending advanced 3D visualization with real-time environmental mapping.
High-fidelity park assist is shipping this weekend to Tesla customers without ultrasonic sensors as part of the holiday release!pic.twitter.com/MEHL6w003r
First, the bad news. The new technology is initially available only to customers with Tesla models that do not have ultrasonic sensors. Elluswamy says models with USS will get the new park assist “eventually” - insert your two-week joke here.
Future
Any time more than one sensor is used to create an output it gets more complicated because the output from each sensor won’t match exactly. Ultrasonic sensors are extremely good at what they do and produce extremely accurate output of distances where they’re aimed, but they can also miss things that are lower to the ground or higher up, things that Tesla Vision may be able to see.
It’s not clear whether Tesla will fuse the two sensor outputs into one or whether they’re planning on disabling USS completely when an improved version gets rolled out to vehicles with USS.
Requirements
The requirements for this new feature are still up in the air as well. All the vehicles that have received the new park assist have Tesla’s latest Ryzen-based infotainment CPU (MCU 3), however, we don’t know whether that will be required for these new visualizations.
Enhanced 3D Surroundings Reconstruction
Elluswamy's posts revealed that the new High-fidelity Park Assist is replacing the older 2D obstacle detection system with a sophisticated 3D reconstruction of the Tesla's surroundings. This breakthrough is an extension of Tesla's Occupancy Network, now boasting much higher resolution, thereby aiding drivers in navigating tight parking spots with unprecedented precision. The engineer posted: “In addition to obstacles, we also predict painted lines on the ground, also in 3D. Together, these help perform the full parking maneuver just by looking at this one screen.”
First Release and Upcoming Enhancements
Acknowledging that this is the initial version, Elluswamy teased future updates to the technology. These updates will likely include improved geometric consistency with the cameras and enhanced tracking of occluded obstacles. Even in its emergent stage, this technology significantly improves upon previous parking assistance systems. He stated: “This is the v1 release of this technology, and will have follow up releases that have even better geometric consistency with the cameras, better persistence of occluded obstacles, etc.”
The visualizations provided by this updated Park Assist system are impressively accurate. The 3D models, which change color based on proximity to the vehicle, offer a new level of awareness and interaction for drivers. This system, which uses vision technology to render 3D models in a way typically associated with LiDAR, is a significant step forward in Tesla's software development.
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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”.
Tesla has started offering Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) in China via a subscription starting at 699 yuan per month — equivalent to about $98.5 USD. It’s the first time Tesla owners in the country will have access to features such as auto lane change, Autopark, Smart Summon, and others.
It’s not clear whether Tesla will begin to offer EAP as a subscription in other regions as well.
The move is seen as the first step towards the expansion of Tesla’s full self driving to China as other markets outside North America wait for the arrival of the FSD software. Yesterday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said the version 12 is “ready for supervised FSD in LHD countries” while RHD countries such as Australia, UK or Japan “will take a bit longer”.
FSD in China
China giant Baidu announced last Monday that it will provide all Tesla vehicles in China its latest version of Baidu Maps starting in May.
This week, Tesla celebrated its 10th anniversary in the Chinese Market where it has a total of 1.7 million owners — Tesla’s second largest market. Elon Musk recently tweeted that Tesla may soon offer full self-driving in China by saying “It may be possible very soon”.
FSD in Europe
On Friday, the Senior Advisor of the Swedish Transport Transportation, Rikard Fredriksson, shared on LinkedIn that he had been demoed the FSD technology in Germany with a Tesla employee. The moment marks the first official use of the assisted driving software in Europe.
Impressive smooth and natural driving
LinkedIn Post by Rikard Fredriksson after the FSD Demo in Germany
In the recent earnings call, Elon Musk said Tesla has over 300 million miles that has been driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.
Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.
Tesla has recently reduced the pricing of its “Full Self-Driving” software in the US, from $12,000 to $8,000, and in Canada from CA$16,000 to $11,000. This price reduction follows a 50% cut in the subscription fee announced earlier this month.
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