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
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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Electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive has announced that it will open up its Rivian Adventure Network (RAN) chargers to Teslas and other EVs later this year.
The Rivian Adventure Network is a comprehensive network of fast-charging sites very similar to Tesla’s own Superchargers. According to Rivian, the Rivian Adventure Network is powered by 100% renewable energy.
New Rivian Chargers
In a post on X, Rivian added that it would introduce new chargers with a tap-to-pay experience to support “a wide range of EVs across a variety of battery voltages.”
Expanding RAN chargers and introducing new tap-to-pay chargers is a clear indication that Rivian is trying to increase customer convenience while ratcheting up its brand value.
All Rivian vehicles and most other EVs still use the CCS connector until they transition to NACS in the next few years. These new chargers will likely include a combination of NACS and CCS connectors to support Rivian’s current and future vehicles that will come equipped with an NACS port.
Charging a Tesla at a Rivian Charge
With over 50,000 Supercharger stalls, Tesla operates the biggest fast-charging network in the world. And 25,000 of these are located in the United States alone. The simplicity of charging at a Supercharger is part of the appeal. Tesla takes care of everything from initiating charging to billing. It ends up being no different than charging at home.
Tesla’s Supercharger network has a stellar reputation, mostly due to its high charging speed and reliability, which Tesla closely monitors in real-time. Major electric vehicle makers will start switching to NACS in the next few years and considering that the Supercharger network is highly trusted, one can see more non-Tesla EVs lining up at Superchargers soon. Giving Tesla owners more choice of where to charge may be crucial to combat congestion.
Rivian currently has over 400 charging stalls across 22 states but plans to expand to more than 600 chargers.
Making Rivian Chargers Just as Simple
While Rivian plans to add a tap-to-pay terminal to its new chargers, it’ll be difficult to beat the convenience of Superchargers for Tesla owners. After Rivian opens up its chargers to other EVs, Tesla owners would need to buy and use CCS to NACS adapters to charge at these networks, although not every Tesla supports the adapter. You can check if your vehicle supports the Tesla adapter.
To simplify the process for Tesla owners, Tesla would also need to interface with Rivian’s chargers to make billing as seamless as it is on its own Supercharger network.
Rivians Charging at Superchargers
Rivian has already begun shipping its customers NACS-to-CCS adapters to charge their vehicles at Tesla Supercharger.
Rivian officially got access to Tesla’s Supercharger network in March 2024. For now, only two companies–Ford and Rivian–have received access to charge at more than 15,000 Tesla Supercharger stalls. More companies like GM, Polestar, and Volvo will get access the following spring.
But Rivian is not stopping at NACS-to-CCS connectors. The Tesla rival plans to switch completely to the NACS port in 2025, at which point they’ll provide their owners a CCS to NACS adapter.
During Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, Tesla talked about its plan for its upcoming robotaxi network and even showed off a design for the app that would allow customers to request vehicles, much like Uber and Lyft.
While Tesla plans to unveil the robotaxi, officially now called CyberCab this August, a true autonomous taxi is at the very least, a couple of years away. So why is Tesla so eager to show off an app and start offering a Tesla taxi service?
in 2023 Uber had a revenue of 37.28 billion, while Lyft had a much smaller revenue of 4.4 billion. For comparison, Tesla’s revenue last year was 96.77 billion. A taxi service, even one operated by humans can be incredibly lucrative. While Tesla’s ultimate goal may be an automated taxi service, they may be itching to get into the space.
Tesla’s robotaxi was initially supposed to be a taxi service owners would lend their vehicles to. While that’s still the plan, Tesla wants their own vehicles to be a part of the service as well.
Will the Robotaxi Service Start With Tesla Drivers?
Tesla comparing themselves to Airbnb and Uber during their earnings call is intriguing. While Tesla can start producing robotaxis almost whenever they want, it’d likely be smart to wait until autonomy is solved so they’re not limiting themselves to current FSD hardware.
While full autonomy is likely several years away, Tesla seems to be eager to make this push toward a Tesla-owned service. Is Tesla thinking about operating their own Uber-like service? Tesla could be thinking about releasing their future robotaxi app and service in “beta,” letting current Tesla owners operate their own vehicles on the service.
This could result in several benefits for Tesla, not only letting them test their service but also opening up another revenue stream. This would allow Tesla to start operating their robotaxi network as soon as this year, and then slowly replace drivers and owner vehicles with Tesla-owned robotaxis.
Tesla Shows Off Robotaxi App
Tesla showed off it's robotaxi app
At the earnings call, Tesla also showed off a design of their robotaxi app. While it feels early to design an app for a service that could be years away, Tesla appears to be preparing itself for the future and getting customers excited about the prospect.
Tesla showed off five screens of the app, essentially showing how you’d request a robotaxi, how you can view its progress, and control certain features of the vehicle. Through the various screens, you can see most of Tesla’s Autopilot features coming to fruition in terms of autonomy, such as summon, self-driving and eventually Autopark.
Summon - Much like Tesla has re-thought the interior of a car and so many features, you can see the same mechanics applied to the app. To request a vehicle, you simply hold down a summon button and you’ll be presented with an estimate of when a vehicle will arrive.
Set Preferences and Destination - On the second screen, you can see the vehicle’s current location on a 3D map, possibly alluding to future FSD visualizations. It also lets you set your destination and set the climate temperature to your preference.
Trip Progress - While you’re traveling in the vehicle, you’ll be able to view trip information as well as set entertainment options.
Recap
Tesla had a lot to talk about during their earnings call and specifically about the Robotaxi — more information was revealed than ever before.
While there are various things at play to make a service like this come together, we can easily separate them out into separate components.
There’s the robotaxi itself, which Musk recently said would be similar to Tesla’s next-gen vehicle without a steering wheel. However, during this earnings call, he revealed that Tesla will save its new “unboxed” manufacturing process for the robotaxi and use a more traditional method for their next vehicle.
Then there’s FSD itself, while it’s crucial to operating a driverless robotaxi network, it’s not necessary to start a Tesla taxi service.
The last piece is the ride-hailing component itself and how it’s managed, and Tesla was happy to show this off, which makes us believe that it may be closer to reality than many think. While Tesla needs all three of these components to come together to operate a true robotaxi network, they piece them together separately, much like they’ve done with Autopilot. Initially, Tesla only released auto-steer then slowly added on summon, Autopark and city driving.
When we look back at Tesla five years from now, we may very well look back to this earnings call and say this was the pivotal moment when Tesla started transitioning to a services company.
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