Tesla is now in talks with the city of Palo Alto regarding the launch of its Robotaxi service in the city. According to Palo Alto Online, the city has already held a preliminary meeting with Tesla to discuss a potential partnership.
The city of Palo Alto has been looking for an alternative transport option for its citizens, as the free Palo Alto Shuttle ceased operations in 2020. Palo Alto currently has a rideshare carpool service called ‘Link,’ which offers citizens a cheaper alternative to Uber.
Advantages for Palo Alto
Robotaxi could offer the citizens of Palo Alto an excellent alternative means of transportation. They’d be able to summon their own Cybercab for their trip rather than waiting for a pooled form of transportation like Link.
The best part is that Robotaxi, with its extremely low cost per mile, is likely to also cost the residents less while also being more convenient and more widely available. This could be a massive advantage for its residents, who were previously relying on the free shuttle network and now use the fairly inexpensive but somewhat inconvenient Link service.
Robotaxi Testing Grounds
This deal with Palo Alto could represent an excellent opportunity for Tesla to gather additional data and start testing their autonomous taxi service. However, the City of Palo Alto confirmed that “the potential Tesla deal won’t be realized for some time because of regulatory hurdles.” Tesla will need to work with two California bodies to get this off the ground.
Before this Palo Alto plan can get off the ground, the Robotaxi service will have to be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, and the Cybercab will also have to be approved by the California Department of Motor Vehicles before it can be used. Once regulatory approval is granted, Tesla will likely begin working in earnest to get their Robotaxis off the ground.
During its Robotaxi event, Tesla announced that it plans to start its Robotaxi service with Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in 2025, with the Cybercab entering the picture in late 2026. It’s not clear whether this potential deal keeps this timeline on track or helps expedite it.
Getting the Robotaxi service off the ground in a small location will be an excellent opportunity for Tesla to refine the overall experience, from the Robotaxi app, which is expected to be a separate riding-sharing app, to the user interface in the Robotaxi.
Tesla will also need to continue developing its automated charging and cleaning hubs, which will undoubtedly need to be refined and adjusted as it gets tested in the real world.
The next two years will undoubtedly be very interesting years for Tesla, as they’ll be facing the biggest steps of regulatory approval for both Unsupervised FSD, as well as Robotaxi.
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Tesla has drastically improved the connectivity portion of their app in the last year or two. Prior to these updates, if you want to start the vehicle’s climate system, you needed to open the Tesla app, wait for the vehicle to wake up, then press the HVAC icon.
Tesla then introduced “delayed” commands, which allows you to press the HVAC icon upon opening the app, and Tesla would then automatically send the command to the vehicle once it’s awake.
More recently, Tesla made it so the vehicle sends its most recent data to Tesla before falling sleeping, meaning that when someone opens the Tesla app, they’re looking at the most recent vehicle data, even if the vehicle is sleeping.
Now Tesla is introducing offline commands for newer models, letting users send a command to their vehicle over Bluetooth instead of relying on an Internet connection. The process is transparent to users, if the user is in close proximity to their vehicle, the app will send the command over Bluetooth, otherwise it will send it over WiFi or cellular.
Offline commands are faster and more reliable. When you press the button to open the frunk, it’ll now do this instantly, instead of waking up the vehicle first. However, it looks like not every model will be supported.
Legacy Model S / Model X
Legacy Model S and Model X vehicles - so any S/X produced before the 2021 refresh, won’t be able to use offline commands, at least at this time. A user reached out to Tesla Service to find out why their offline commands weren’t working, and a tier two Tesla service rep confirmed that this feature isn’t supported on legacy vehicles.
Legacy vehicles will continue to require internet connectivity for commands, except for unlocking the vehicle.
Legacy Model S and X unfortunately don’t receive the majority of features in recent updates due to various reasons. One of them is likely due to the smaller userbase and another is likely due to the vertical screen orientation that differs from the newer models.
This limitation for offline commands is likely due to a technical limitation preventing Tesla from implementing it on these vehicles, rather than any lack of trying.
Requirements
To use offline commands with the Tesla app, you’ll need to run version 4.38 or higher of the Tesla app. The most recent version is 4.38.5, which is available for Android and iPhones. Your vehicle will also need to be running update 2024.38 or higher, which is currently only available to about a third of the Tesla fleet.
You’ll also need to have one of the supported models, which appear to be the Model 3/Y, 2021+ Model S/X and the Cybertruck.
Future Support?
Tesla has committed to supporting legacy vehicles where possible, with other improvements for safety like improved Forward Collision Warning and Automatic Emergency Braking for MCU1 vehicles and FSD 12.3.6. It is possible that eventually, these vehicles may receive support for offline commands, but it won’t be likely, given Tesla’s priorities to get features working on the newer vehicles.
Tesla is updating the Model 3 and Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive variants with new battery packs. This new pack will replace the current BYD Blade pack in these vehicles. Its interesting to see Tesla making battery pack changes to vehicles, especially in light of recent news on Tesla working with its cell manufacturing partners and internally to make better batteries.
The new pack, which is likely replacing the current BYD 7C pack in the Model 3 and Model Y RWD variants, is going to be called the CATL 6M. The last time we had a CATL LFP pack in the RWD variants was back in 2021.
This pack will be bringing a 6% increase in overall capacity, from 60.1 kWh to 62.5 kWh. At about a 4% increase in energy, it’s not a huge jump, but the pack is also expected to bring improved charging performance due to a higher nominal capacity and voltage. Another benefit will be its reduced mass, with the new battery pack being about 44 pounds (20 kg) lighter. These items all contribute to range and charging performance, so we could potentially see a range increase in these RWD models.
However, Tesla previously software locked the extra 2.5 kWh to match the BYD packs that were being shipped at the same time as the CATL packs - which mostly just resulted in slightly improved charging performance and better battery longevity.
Pack Chemistry
This pack is an LFP - or Lithium Iron Phosphate. LFP packs have more stable chemistry, resulting in less degradation, but less energy density for weight. They also perform poorly in contrast to their NMC siblings in extreme cold or extreme heat. However, they can be charged to 100% all the time, and Tesla actually recommends this. We wrote about Tesla’s battery tech in detail, for those looking for more information.
There is a possibility that manganese will be introduced into this new pack. Manganese improves energy density, and also helps with low-temperature performance, which would help to mitigate some of the concerns with today’s current LFP packs in places that see cold weather on the regular, like Canada or the Nordic nations.
Release Date? North America?
This battery back likely won’t come to North America now, due to tariffs against Chinese batteries and cells. Customers in Europe, Asia, and other markets can expect to see these batteries in their vehicles sometime next year while Tesla works on other solutions to provide the North American market with a cost-competitive LFP pack that’s sourced from materials within the continent.