You can hide unused music services in your vehicles
Not a Tesla App
Tesla’s infotainment system comes preloaded with several apps, including various music services. Just like apps on your phone, the interface can get a little cluttered if you keep all the apps, even the ones you no longer use or never used in the first place. Fortunately, Tesla can streamline your media experience by hiding unused services. This includes the newly added Apple Podcasts.
Hiding Unused Music Services
To hide any music services you don’t use, you’ll need to get to audio settings. There are various ways to get there, including:
Using the Music Player: Drag the music player upward to reveal additional information. Tap on the 'levels' icon to go to audio settings, where you can adjust the audio balance, EQ and music sources.
Volume Control Shortcut: Tap the lower/raise volume icon in the 'dock' and then press the levels icon that appears. This is a quick way to access audio settings.
Choosing Your Services
After accessing audio settings, tap on the ‘Sources’ tab.
All services will be listed, simply uncheck any services you want to hide
To reintroduce a hidden service, you’ll need to return to this menu to re-enable it
Effects of Hiding Services
When you hide a music service, it gets removed from various locations in your vehicle, which can help simplify the interface and make things easier to find.
App Icons
Removing a service will remove the streaming music icon from the ‘All Apps’ menu. It will also remove it from the shortcut menu that lets you jump to a different music service when you tap the streaming service’s icon at the top left of a music app. For example, tapping the Spotify icon will present a drop-down menu that lets you jump to another music service.
Voice Commands
Removing a music service could also affect music voice commands. If you hide the default music service such as Streaming (Slacker) in the U.S., music commands may not work unless you specify a service name, or you’re already playing music using another service.
Search Results
Another positive effect of hiding unused streaming services is that music search results will only display results for available services. So if you hide Caraoke, or Tune-In, then music search will no longer include results for these services. However, if you’re logged in to any music services, then search results will still be displayed, even if the service is hidden.
Hiding Explicit Music
While hiding unused apps is great, you can also remove just explicit content from select services, without removing the entire app. However, this only works on select services such as Streaming and Apple Podcasts. To hide explicit content go to Audio Settings, tap the Options tab, and turn off ‘Explicit Content.’ Interestingly, Spotify already labels their content as explicit when appropriate, however, Tesla does not support hiding explicit Spotify content yet.
Advantages of Hiding Music Services
Hiding unused services helps declutter your interface and streamlines your experience. Currently, this feature is limited to music services. However, as Tesla continues adding more apps to its infotainment system, there may be future support for hiding other types of apps.
It's important to note that the available settings may vary depending on your market region, and not all settings are applicable to every audio source.
Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.
Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.
Optimus is Blind
Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.
Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.
Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.
What’s Next?
Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.
Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.
There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.
We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.
In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.
GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.
End of Cruise
GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.
Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.
Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019.
Competition is Killer
Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.
Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.
GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy
As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.
NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.
“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3
With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.
In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection.
The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.
Others Impressed - Licensing FSD
Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next.
BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!
Not a Tesla App
It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.
There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.