Upcoming Tesla Update Will Change Indicator Lights Due to Recall: A Look at the Changes

NHTSA Recalls Font Size

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Here we go again. The mainstream media is jumping all over Tesla for a simple over-the-air update that fixes an unusual recall affecting nearly 2.2 million vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration flagged a non-compliance issue concerning the font size of the Brake, Park, and Antilock Brake System visual warning indicators on the vehicle's dashboard display.

The Nature of the Issue

Our favorite Tesla hacker, @greentheonly, noticed something in update 2023.44.30.13, stating, “I thought it's no big deal, but apparently it is.

Tesla is changing the indicator lights in their vehicles

Greentheonly / Not a Tesla App

At the heart of the recall is relatively minor -- the font size used for specific dashboard warning indicators. According to NHTSA's findings, the font size used in Tesla's vehicle displays did not meet the minimum requirements set by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Nos. 105 and 135. This discrepancy raised concerns that the smaller font could reduce the driver's ability to quickly recognize and respond to critical safety warnings, thereby increasing the risk of a collision.

In a response highlighting Tesla’s unique capabilities, the company addressed this issue through an over-the-air software update. No need to bring the vehicle into the service center, Tesla remotely updates the affected vehicles, enlarging the font size of the warning indicators to meet regulatory standards. The updates began rolling out last month.

The Debate Around Recall Terminology

The incident has once again reignited discussions around the terminology and procedures used to classify and manage vehicle recalls in the era of connected and software-driven automobiles. Tesla and Elon Musk have previously criticized the traditional recall system, arguing that "recall" is misleading when issues can be resolved through OTA software updates. This latest event underscores the growing gap between conventional automotive recall practices and the capabilities of electric vehicle technology, prompting calls for regulatory bodies to modernize their approach to reflect these advancements.

Another mystifying aspect of the mainstream media’s contempt for Tesla is the number of other physical recalls issued to legacy automakers. Tesla has far fewer recalls, yet when the company does, it is big news, despite the fact that the problem is usually solved before the recall is even published, and it is done in a matter of seconds with an OTA update. As Tesla continues to innovate and lead in the electric vehicle sector and the entire industry, the company's approach to addressing recalls through OTA updates is setting a new standard.

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Tesla Smart Voice Assistant Coming - Vehicle Responds for First Time

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If you hop into your Tesla and say ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’ after pressing the Voice Command button, there is a good chance it’ll reply with “Hello!” This is the newest and most interesting piece of news pointing us to the conclusion that a Tesla voice assistant is on the way.

Previously, if you tried this, it would simply return “Command not understood.” This is the first time the vehicle is responding and interacting with the user.

Experience It Yourself

You’ll need to have your vehicle language set to English. Once that’s done, you can use the voice command button on your steering wheel or yoke - for the Model 3 and Model Y, push the right wheel button, and for the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck, press the button. Then go ahead and say Hi or Hello.

The Hello! response may even have regional differences. For a German Tesla owner, after setting his language to English, the response came back as “Hallo.” We’re interested to see what the responses may be in other regions, so let us know if you notice anything interesting.

We’ve tried a few other basic things, but it seems that, for now, the vehicle only replies to a simple greeting. Asking it what time it is or the $TSLA stock price doesn’t seem to do much yet - unless you’re in China with the updated Smart Assistant.

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Server-Side Update

This update appears to be happening over Tesla’s voice system backend and doesn’t require the Holiday Update. Users who aren’t on the Holiday Update are reporting that they’re getting this new response as well.

We already know that Tesla interprets speech remotely, and the driver’s voice is not processed in the vehicle. Instead, the voice snippet is transmitted to Tesla’s servers, where Tesla processes it and sends a response back to the vehicle so that the vehicle can interpret it. This is unlikely to change with a smart assistant, as Elon Musk has already said that Grok will still process data server-side instead of on-device.

Many users recently also noticed significant improvements to voice commands, saying that the system understands them better and that responses now come back faster.

All of these things point to a new backend system for voice processing that Tesla is testing. It’s not unusual for a company to switch to a new backend process but keep the capabilities the same as the legacy system until it’s ready to roll out the new features. At that point, it’s simply a flip of a switch to allow the new capabilities.

The new smart assistant that was rolled out in China is mostly a backend change, with the in-vehicle experience largely remaining the same. The activation method (button press) and user interface remain the same. What changed is the response that comes back from the server, and the assistant gained a voice. The new voice we receive with a smart assistant could very well be the new voice users are experiencing in the navigation system in newer vehicles.

Below is a video of the voice assistant in China:

Vehicle Support - Intel?

When China received the Smart Assistant, it was locked to cars equipped with AMD Ryzen processors only. Shortly after its initial launch, it became available to older cars with Intel Atom processors as well.

However, we’re not sure whether it would apply to legacy Model S and Model X owners. A legacy vehicle owner had their vehicle report “Command not understood” when they tried the ’Hi’ voice command.

Grok for Tesla

Elon has previously mentioned that Tesla vehicles would receive Grok AI. Grok, as of yet, still doesn’t have live speech support like other LLM models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. However, a major update to Grok just brought massively improved image generation via a new model called Aurora.

xAI has been hard at work improving Grok, and we’re sure that live speech support is on its way soon. Once that feature arrives on X, Tesla will likely be well-positioned to enable a Grok-powered smart assistant fleet-wide with a flick of a switch.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

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Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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