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”.
Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.
If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.
Tesla Smoking While Charging
If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.
Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.
Why Does It Happen?
When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.
Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.
In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.
Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.
Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.
Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.
YouTube Improvements
The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.
While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.
Intel Inside
The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.
With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.
Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.
Chromium Web App
Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.
As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.
However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.
We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.
Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.
If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.