Tesla Finally Launches FSD V12.4.2 to Customers with Vision-Monitoring Changes

Tesla releases FSD 12.4.2

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After a month-long delay, Tesla sent FSD v12.4.2 to employees yesterday with update 2024.15.10. After just a few hours of the update going out to employees, Tesla started sending it to OG testers as well, who were already on FSD v12.4.1.

Issues Behind Delay

On X, Elon Musk broke down some of the details behind the delays. He mentioned that part of the issues behind the V12.4.2 delays were based on training. Tesla was seeing fewer interventions with FSD v12.4, but the release suffered from driving smoothness, which ironically was supposed to be one of the key features of this release.

Musk explained that part of the issue was due to too much focus on interventions, and not enough on normal driving. He compared it to training a doctor on emergency room patients, versus training on regular preventative care.

Vision-Based Attention Monitoring Changes

With FSD update 12.4.2, Tesla changed some of the language used for its Vision-Based Attention Monitoring in the release notes. Here’s a breakdown of some of the key points in the language. The changes to the release notes are below. Phrases or words that were removed are crossed out, while those added are in bold.

“When Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is enabled, the driver monitoring system now primarily relies on the cabin camera to determine driver attentiveness. This enhancement is available on vehicles equipped with a cabin camera and only when the cabin camera has clear and continuous visibility of the driver's eyes Cabin camera must have clear visibility (e.g., the camera is not occluded, eyes, arms are visible, there is sufficient cabin illumination, and the driver is looking forward at the road ahead and not wearing sunglasses, a hat with a low brim without sunglasses, or other objects covering the their eyes). Outside of these In other circumstances, the driver monitoring system will continue to primarily rely on a combination of torque-based (steering wheel) and vision-based monitoring to detect driver attentiveness. When the cabin camera is actively monitoring driver attentiveness, a green dot appears next to the steering wheel icon on the touchscreen.

If the cabin camera detects inattentiveness the driver to be inattentive, a warning will appear. The warning can be dismissed by the driver immediately reverting their attention back to the road ahead. Warnings will escalate depending on the nature and frequency of detected inattentiveness, with continuous inattention leading to a Strikeout.

Cabin camera images do not leave the vehicle itself, which means the system cannot save or transmit information unless you enable data sharing.”

Arms Need to be Visible and Other Changes

There are various interesting changes here. While some of the changes are just improved wording to make the feature clearer, there are others that are worth highlighting which could point at changes to Tesla’s vision-based monitoring.

The first is the addition of “arms are visible.” Apparently, Tesla now wants to be able to see your arms to better detect attentiveness. Tesla may want to see that your arms are on the steering wheel, or they maybe they want to make sure your arms are moving so that someone isn’t able to post a static photo in front of the cabin camera to circumvent the attention monitoring. The reason isn’t clear, but looks like having your arms visible is now a requirement.

There are other small changes like the removal of a “hat with a low brim,” which was replaced by more generic wording that says the driver’s eyes must be visible.

However, near the end, Tesla removed the portion that said the driver monitoring system will rely on a combination of torque-based (steering wheel) and vision-based monitoring. This was changed to simply say that Tesla will rely primarily on torque-based (steering wheel) monitoring when vision-based monitoring is unavailable. It’s not clear whether this is just semantics and the wording now better describes how the vision-monitoring feature works, or if Tesla made changes so that the vehicle is simply either doing vision monitoring or steering wheel torque detection, and it doesn’t try to combine the two sources to detect whether the driver is paying attention.

Even more interestingly, the last line that says “cabin camera images do not leave the vehicle itself, which means the system cannot save or transmit information unless you enable data sharing,” has been removed. This could point to Tesla saving images of the cabin camera to improve its AI training model.

Tesla will display a green dot on the screen whenever its using its vision-based monitoring system.

Release Date

Either way, we’re glad to finally see FSD v12.4.2 going out to employees and early-access owners. The release is expected to have far fewer interventions and improve vehicle smoothness during braking and acceleration. If there are no major issues found, this update could go wide to all customers with FSD and on update 2024.14 or lower in the coming weeks.

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Tesla Building Cortex 2.0 Supercomputer at Giga Texas to Power FSD

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FSD’s insatiable appetite for AI compute is taking shape once again at Giga Texas, where Tesla is building out Cortex 2.0 — its second large-scale GPU supercomputer cluster — on the facility’s north side.

This confirmation comes thanks to the detailed research and findings by Giga Texas drone pilot Joe Tegtmeyer, who shared his findings on X.

For months, there has been some speculation on what this new site would be - new storage, the Optimus production line, preparation for the Cybercab’s unboxed assembly process, and more. Now, thanks to permits filed by Tesla, we know that this new area is destined to become the second supercomputer destined for FSD training. 

Cortex 2.0

There are some key details we can unpack from what we’ve learned about Cortex 2.0. The new facility will be on the north side of Giga Texas, opposite Cortex 1.0, which is on the south side. The permits explicitly tie the usage of this expansion to Cortex 2.0, namely through the fact that it is a data center.

This is actually a change from Tesla’s original plans - the northern section was intended to be used as a central campus support facility, with three smaller facilities and water storage tanks. Now, it has been redesignated as Cortex 2.0 and is one large structure.

The permits that have been filed have already been approved and cover the foundations, underground water mains, and building itself. The steel structure is actively being put together on the concrete foundations, and about 50% of the roof decking is already complete, bringing the exterior shell closer to completion.

Fueling FSD’s Brain

The deployment of Cortex 2.0 is the latest in Tesla’s massive and ongoing investment in the computational power required to train FSD. While this primarily covers FSD for cars, this will also eventually apply to Optimus, which is powered by the same AI4 computer and also runs a variant of FSD.

This isn’t Tesla’s first foray into large-scale AI infrastructure and won’t be their last. Alongside Dojo, their home-grown AI supercomputer, Tesla has been partnering closely with Nvidia to ensure they have the GPUs necessary to do all the hard work. Cortex 2.0 is the next iteration, and once it's fully online, we can expect that Tesla’s work on FSD will accelerate even further.

Especially since Elon is planning something truly outrageous once again:

Been thinking about the fastest way to bring a terawatt of compute online.

That is roughly equivalent to all electrical power produced in America today.

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) May 12, 2025

You can check out Joe’s full video below:

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Tesla FSD in Europe: Highway Approval Expected to Arrive in September

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With European Tesla owners eagerly awaiting any news on FSD in Europe, we’ve seen Tesla tease FSD, and also point out exactly what the barrier has been - regulatory approval. Now, following the latest meeting of UNECE, new regulatory amendments are set to unlock “System-Initiated Maneuvers” (SIM) on highways across participating European nations.

This development, highlighted by Kees Roelandschap on X, notes that the latest documents from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) center on amendments to UNECE regulation 171. These changes were formally adopted into UNECE during the WP29 World Forum in March 2025.

Now, the amendment that will enable SIM will come into force on September 26, 2025. This six-month period after approval is standard UNECE procedure and allows objections from party states that would halt the implementation. Objections to UNECE amendments are genuinely rare, with 95% of amendments passing without objection once the World Forum adopts them.

What This Means for FSD in Europe

System-initiated maneuvers will allow your Tesla to perform actions autonomously, such as changing lanes on a highway, while the driver remains fully responsible for supervision. This is a substantial step up from current regulatory standards that only allow for suggested maneuvers or require explicit driver initiation for every automated maneuver. 

This inches towards the more normal “hands-off, eyes-on” approach that Tesla has taken with FSD Supervised in North America and China. This regulatory change will help to provide the legal frameworks needed to deploy more advanced autonomy capabilities in Europe, at least matching what’s available on highways in North America.

Tesla is waiting for EU approval (sigh)

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) May 12, 2025

Highways Only

The UNECE regulation will apply to all countries that adopt its standards, including the European Union, Japan, and South Korea - unless they specifically block it. This is a relatively positive development, but there are some hiccups.

This regulation only allows for system-initiated maneuvers on highways, not low-speed roadways. That means the city streets portion of FSD’s capabilities - including handling ‘Start FSD from Park` and reaching your destination’s parking spot - still won’t be available in Europe. 

In addition, the UNECE framework has stricter requirements for driver monitoring and attentiveness - which means that some nags, including the dreaded wheel nag, are likely to remain a key portion of the experience.

Progress on autonomous driving regulations in Europe has been fraught with indecision and caution, which has been a source of frustration for many who are watching the everyday progress of FSD in North America, and more recently, in China. Even with individual countries recently approving testing of FSD on public roads, harmonized UNECE regulations are the key to wider, consistent deployment, which will allow everyday customers to use it as well.

While the path to full parity with North America may be long and involve even more regulatory machinations, the upcoming implementation of System-Initiated Maneuvers is a big step forward for Tesla owners in Europe. It is a key piece of the puzzle that will help Tesla bring some more features of FSD to Europe, assuming the September timeline holds.

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