However, during Tesla's Q&A session, Tesla announced that FSD v12 would roll out to all customers in North America in "the weeks to come."
Musk, who answered the question, goes on to say that it will go out to the 400,000 cars who currently have access to FSD Beta in the U.S. and Canada. This number remains largely unchanged since Tesla first expanded FSD to everyone in North America who has bought or subscribed to the FSD.
FSD V12 Is Still In “Beta”
In Tesla's shareholder deck, Tesla confirms that v12 is end-to-end AI and calls the feature "FSD Beta software," confirming that FSD will remain in beta with the initial release of v12.
The shareholder deck states:
"In Q4, we released our latest FSD Beta software (V12) to select Tesla employees, and more recently, to customers. V12 utilizes end-to-end training, enhancing the driving experience. We also introduced the 2nd generation of the Optimus robot, which uses Tesla-designed actuators and sensors and improved AI capabilities. Both FSD Beta and Optimus are trained with similar technology pillars: real-world data, neural net training and cutting-edge hardware and software."
End of Separate Branches for FSD Beta?
Tesla has historically released new FSD Beta updates to a smaller, select group of testers, with the majority of vehicle owners remaining on the "production" code branch and keeping an older, but more stable version of FSD Beta.
With the holiday update, we saw the merger of FSD Beta updates and production releases, with everyone receiving a single holiday update (2023.44.30) that included FSD Beta 11.4.9. With the release of FSD v12, we expected the latest FSD Beta builds to once again diverge from the latest public releases.
However, Musk's comment on FSD v12's upcoming release to all customers makes it sound like this may not be the case. If Tesla is releasing FSD Beta v12 to all owners in North America in the coming weeks, it could be a part of Tesla update 2024.2, or a subsequent release.
Licensing FSD
Tesla previously talked about licensing FSD to other manufacturers. However, it looks like there hasn't been much progress on that front.
Michael questioned if there had been any progress on licensing FSD to another company.
Musk answers the question by saying there have been tentative conversations but ultimately revealed that there have been no deals yet.
FSD Hardware 5
Musk talked a little about Tesla's FSD hardware, saying Tesla continues to optimize software to get the most out of FSD hardware 3. However, more interestingly he revealed that Tesla is about to complete the design of Tesla hardware 5.
He didn't go into any other details on whether hardware 5 would simply have more compute power or additional hardware, but he said that Tesla is making gigantic improvements from hardware 3 to 4, to 5. Tesla released hardware 4 in March 2023, with additional compute power and higher-resolution cameras.
Musk also talked about a potentially interesting opportunity for Tesla to run "generalized AI tasks" on their vehicles when they're not in use.
Update on FSD Miles Driven
Tesla owners have driven about 725 million miles with FSD Beta
Not a Tesla App
While Tesla gave several updates on FSD during their Q&A session, they didn't touch on the amount of FSD miles driven during the actual call, but instead provided an update on their shareholder deck like they have in the past. Last quarter the chart revealed that there had been about 525 million miles driven on FSD Beta.
In this quarter's updated chart, Tesla shows that there have now been about 750 million miles driven since March 2021. That's an increase of about 225 million miles in three months.
Based on Tesla's 400,000 FSD Beta customers, some quick math reveals that each customer uses FSD Beta about 187 miles per month, or just higher than 6 miles per day.
The miles-driven chart trajectory has remained about the same since May 2023, which signifies that there hasn't been a major uptick in FSD Beta sales or its daily usage.
This will change when Tesla rolls FSD Beta out to additional markets, which may happen with China first. It'll also be interesting to see the impact of customer usage when Tesla rolls out FSD Beta v12.
Although Tesla didn't touch on the expansion of FSD Beta during the call, there were more details than usual this time around. Tesla provided updates on their next-gen vehicle, Optimus and the Cybertruck, among others.
Goldman Sachs evaluates Tesla's FSD as being worth $1 - $3 billion in revenue but reveals that this could balloon up to $10 to $75 billion in the next 6 years.
A lot of this may depend on Tesla's FSD success with end-to-end AI.
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Tesla has begun to reach out to customers in the United States and is offering demo drives of the Cybertruck on an invite-only basis. @brandonhd on X shared the first invite image, and it looks like it's going out quite quickly to multiple locations that have Cybertrucks on display.
Up until now, display vehicles have been for just that – looking, but no touching. Some Tesla delivery centers and showrooms have also allowed viewers to take a seat inside and open it up, but most are still locked away behind the velvet rope.
It’s exciting to see that Tesla has begun to demo them – and it can only be so long until demo drives open up to everyone.
Advisor-led Demo
This Demo Drive is led by a Tesla Advisor – while you’re driving, the advisor will be in the passenger seat, walking you through the experience. They’ll explain steer-by-wire, off-road controls, and will introduce new-to-Tesla buyers to all the features that are currently available.
The list of locations so far for demo drives appears to be fairly limited, but we will hopefully see demo drives roll out throughout the United States, and eventually Canada too. Here is the current list of city/state locations that have seen demo drive invites.
Actually Smart Summon, the successor to Tesla’s Smart Summon feature, has been confirmed to be coming as soon as next month as per Elon Musk. Colloquially known as “ASS”, Actually Smart Summon is supposed to improve on the regular Smart Summon capabilities, which have historically used ultrasonic sensors (USS) to navigate parking lots.
We’re looking forward to Actually Smart Summon, and we’re quite excited about what other features will be unlocked once it finally shows up at our doorstep.
Vision-based Improvements
ASS is supposed to bring Smart Summon to vehicles that don’t have USS – using Tesla Vision. Most recently, Tesla has brought Autopark to vehicles without USS, and Vision-based Autopark has been a huge success. It is faster, more reliable, and smoother than the older USS-based solution. It can also park and maneuver in tighter locations.
Today, Smart Summon is sometimes useful at best, usually a party trick, or downright dangerous at worst. It’s excellent and best used in straight lines, where you have a clear line of sight of the vehicle, and can stop it if doesn’t see an obstacle.
I used Smart Summon today, just before writing this article – my 2022 Model Y (with USS) – did manage to show up just fine – in a straight-line location from where I was parked, after exiting the parking spot fairly cleanly. However, I’ve previously used Smart Summon and have had the vehicle turn towards obstacles, such as cart returns or curbs. Overall, it’s a sometimes-useful feature that has a lot of drawbacks right now.
Smart Summon is also restricted to a certain distance – and it's pretty small. The max distance is shorter than most parking lots, being only about 215 ft (65m). If you’re lucky enough to park close, it's very useful to bring your car right to you.
Actually Smart Summon
ASS will bring FSD V12-like capabilities to Smart Summon – the vehicle will primarily use Vision to drive toward you (or the location you’ve indicated). ASS has been supposed to be coming since about September 2022 and has seen many delays – we’re almost at the 2-year point today.
We’re looking forward to Actually Smart Summon being able to bring the vehicle – safely – right to you. ASS is also one of the key steps towards bringing some other cool features that Elon Musk has previously mentioned – Park Seek and Banish Autopark.
We’re also hopeful that Actually Smart Summon will increase the maximum range a vehicle can be summoned, because the current range is fairly small. Alongside Park Seek and Banish Autopark, we’re closing in on a Robotaxi-based future.
Park Seek and Banish Autopark
When the FSD v12.4 showed up, Elon also mentioned that going forward, vehicles would automatically park themselves when arriving in a parking lot – Park Seek – and that if you got out of the car at the entrance to a business, you could get it to automatically park itself in the parking lot – Banish Autopark. These are two features that are needed for Robotaxi to work – which itself is delayed to October 10th of this year. We’re looking quite forward to them – as in combination with Actually Smart Summon, Tesla has reached the cusp of vehicle autonomy.
A vehicle that arrives, driverless, at the location you’re at, then drives somewhere, parks itself there, and waits for you – is the definition of a Robotaxi.
While we’re likely to have to wait for Banish Autopark and Park Seek just a bit longer, Actually Smart Summon being around the corner is exciting! Gone will be the days of having to run out to your car when you forgot your umbrella – your car will just come right to you instead.
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