Tesla Software Update 2025.8 Released to Employees—What May Be Included

March 3, 2025

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has just released software update 2025.8 to employees for testing. This is the norm for Tesla, as they release software updates to their internal audience for testing before beginning a rollout to the public.

While we don’t know what’s in this update just yet, there are several features we know that are coming up and could be included.

Adaptive Headlight Support

Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, recently confirmed that the refreshed Model Y will receive adaptive headlights, as well as the matrix headlight functionality. In fact, it’ll be the first vehicle in Tesla’s line-up that will support matrix headlights in North America.

The feature just received approval in the United States recently and will be rolling out to all Tesla vehicles that have matrix headlights sometime soon. That includes support for the Cybertruck, and Model S, Model X, and Model 3 as well.

Grok Support

xAI recently launched the newest version of their smart assistant - Grok 3. That same smart assistant is eventually supposed to make its way over to Tesla vehicles, according to Elon Musk.

The new smart assistant is expected to provide quite a bit of new functionality when it comes to intelligently handling your voice commands, and it could be included in this upcoming update, although a Spring launch is more likely. Grok 3 just launched voice support last week.

Cybertruck Updates

Siddhant Awasthi, Tesla’s Cybertruck program manager, recently confirmed that a new set of suspension controls are on their way to the Cybertruck. As of now, you can only adjust the vehicle’s height in the vehicle.

We’re hoping this new feature allows access to vehicle height adjustments from the Tesla App, as well as unlocking some new vehicle drive heights in general.

One of the items that didn’t manage to make it into 2025.2 was the Cold Weather Fix for the Cybertruck. Certain Cybertrucks have issues reaching max charging speed due to not properly pre-conditioning in cold weather when plugged into an L2 charger, and some Cybertrucks are also seeing drastically reduced regen in those temperatures, too. Hopefully, this will also get tackled in update 2025.8.

In-Cabin Radar Support

Tesla has started to activate the in-cabin radar in older Model Y vehicles that have it equipped, but it has confirmed that other equipped models will eventually also receive support. The in-cabin radar replaces the front seat occupancy sensors and instead uses the radar to more accurately detect the presence of humans.

We expect vehicles to also start supporting rear-seat passenger detection in Q3 2025.

New Nav Routing Options

New navigation routing options were released for Chinese users in early January, which included new options such as Least Congestion, Prefer Highways, and Lowest Tolls. It also brought with it a new Service Area modal, which shows what amenities are available at various vehicle service areas on the highways.

We’re hoping to receive at least some of these features in North America and Europe sometime soon. We’ve been waiting for that Avoid Highways option for what seems like an eternity now.

Trailer Profiles for Model S, X, Y

Trailer Profiles launched with the Cybertruck, and are, for now, an exclusive feature. Hopefully, the ability to save trailer details will make its way to other tow-hitch-compatible vehicles. Trailer Profiles allow you to save information about your trailer, including type and braking settings - which can help more accurately estimate energy usage. In addition, it is an easy way to track trailer mileage.

Custom Vehicle Wraps for Models S, 3, X, Y

With the 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla gave the ability to wrap the Cybertruck in whatever style you wanted - in the vehicle visualization. Many people used it to match the actual wraps or decals they had on their vehicles. This functionality also covered license plates - including custom styles, numbering, and lettering.

Tesla later confirmed these wrap and license visualizations would eventually roll their way out to the rest of the fleet, so we’re expecting them to either in 2025.8 or shortly after.

Sentry Mode Efficiency Update

Back in November 2024, Tesla made some significant improvements to the Cybertruck’s Sentry Mode. They achieved an almost 40% reduction in the overall energy usage of Sentry Mode by making better use of the onboard vehicle compute.

These updates should soon roll out to the rest of the fleet, greatly improving Sentry Mode efficiency.

Release Date

In general, Tesla takes between one to two weeks to release an update to customers after sending it to wave 1 employees. That timeline isn’t firm - so sometimes it could take five days, and sometimes it could take the full two weeks, but the clock is ticking for this one now. We should have the full release notes in the next week or two and then our first look at some of the new features in the following days.

Update: Tesla update 2025.8.3 has now started rolling out to employees. This is often an internal bug fix release before the update starts going out to the public. We’d expect Tesla to release this update to the first batch of vehicles in the next few days to a week.

You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

June 15, 2025

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most significant here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety.

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets.

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

Tesla FSD in Europe: June Update

June 14, 2025

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

The road to bringing FSD to Europe has been a long and complex one and filled with regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles. Elon Musk, as well as other members of Tesla’s AI team, have previously voiced their grievances with the regulatory approval process on X.

However, it appears that there is finally some progress in getting things moving with recent changes to upcoming autonomy regulations, but the process still seems slow.

Waiting on the Dutch

Elon commented on X recently, stating that Tesla is waiting for approval from Dutch authorities and then the EU to start rolling out FSD in Europe. Tesla is focusing on acquiring approvals from the Dutch transportation authority, which will provide them with the platform they need to gain broader acceptance in Europe. Outside of the Netherlands, Tesla is also conducting testing in Norway, which provides a couple of avenues for them to obtain national-level approval.

The frustration has been ongoing, with multiple committee meetings bringing up autonomy regulation but always pulling back at the last second before approving anything. The last meeting on Regulation 157, which governs Automated Lane Keeping Systems, concluded with authorities from the UK and Spain requesting additional time to analyze the data before reaching a conclusion.

Tesla, as well as Elon, have motioned several times for owners to reach out to their elected representatives to move the process forward, as it seems that Tesla’s own efforts are being stymied.

This can seem odd, especially since Tesla has previously demoed FSD working exceptionally smoothly on European roads - and just did it again in Rome when they shared the video below on X.

FSD Supervised testing in Rome, Italy

Pending regulatory approval pic.twitter.com/TXh3uQIfrx
— Tesla Europe & Middle East (@teslaeurope) June 12, 2025

DCAS Phase 3

While the approval process has been slow, Kees Roelandschap pointed out that there may be a different regulatory step that could allow FSD to gain a foothold in Europe.

According to Kees, the European Commission is now taking a new approach to approving ADAS systems under the new DCAS Phase 3 regulations. The Commission is now seeking data from systems currently operational in the United States that can perform System-Initiated Maneuvers and don’t require hands-on intervention for every request.

This is key because those are two of the core functionalities that make FSD so usable, and it also means that there may not be a need to wait years for proper regulations to be written from scratch. Now, the Commission will be looking at real-world data based on existing, deployed technology, which could speed up the process immensely.

What This Means

This new, data-driven regulatory approach could be the path for Tesla to reach its previous target of September for European FSD. While the cogs of bureaucracy are ever slow, sometimes all it takes is a little data to have them turn a bit faster in this case.

Alongside specific countries granting approval for limited field testing with employees, there is some light at the end of the tunnel for FSD in Europe, and hopes are that a release will occur by the end of 2025. With Europe now looking to North America for how FSD is performing, Tesla’s Robotaxi results could also play a role.