Tesla’s Autopilot safety features appear to be undergoing a big architectural shift, and it’s one that many may not have noticed. When a vehicle activates Lane Departure Avoidance, the visualization would previously flip back to the old Autopilot visualization, hinting that the vehicle was using the old Autopilot stack.
With Basic Autopilot not being available on the Cybertruck, Lane Departure Avoidance and Lane Assist, two safety features that leveraged the old Autopilot stack, were also absent on the Cybertruck.
However, with the 2025.14 update, Tesla added these two safety features to the Cybertruck and introduced a new visualization for Lane Departure Avoidance. Since Basic Autopilot is still not available on the Cybertruck, we believe these safety features have been migrated to the newer FSD stack.
This affects all vehicles with FSD, not just the Cybertruck, and includes vehicles on HW3 and HW4. Vehicles without FSD do not appear to have received the updated Lane Departure Avoidance (LDA). Vehicles with older FSD hardware, such as HW 2.5, will likely also remain on the older version of LDA.
Undocumented change in 2024.14.3.1… when using the FSD visualization, it no longer switches back to the AP visualization when lane departure assist is activated; it now just highlights the line in blue. This used to drive me nuts! @teslascope @NotATeslaApp @SawyerMerritt pic.twitter.com/psZYdWVNL3
— Cameron Berry (@cameronberrynh) May 8, 2025
Visualization Changes
One of the most noticeable changes is that Lane Departure Avoidance no longer causes your screen to revert to the old Autopilot visualization and instead keeps the FSD visualizations on the screen. Lane Departure Avoidance also features a new visualization.
As shown in the video above, the new visualization now highlights the lane marking you’re going over in blue on both sides. If your vehicle activates Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance, then the road marking will turn red.
Note: At this time, it appears that this only applies to vehicles with FSD. Non-FSD-equipped vehicles will likely continue to use the older Autopilot stack for safety features for the time being.
Software Unification
This is big news - many people have been wondering why Tesla hasn’t started offering a subset of FSD features to users who only have access to Autopilot, either because they don’t have the FSD package, or they live outside of North America and China.
This appears to be a big step in Tesla unifying its software features and making FSD the standard Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) for all vehicles.
Free Up Resources for FSD
By moving some features over to FSD, Tesla is also cutting out the old software stack, freeing up additional resources for FSD’s immense resource consumption. This could result in future benefits as Tesla stops running two similar software stacks side-by-side. This could also mean that these features will perform better under FSD than Autopilot since FSD has a better understanding of its environment.
There are still numerous features that work under the old Autopilot stack. In the near future, this could also apply to the rest of Tesla’s Autopilot safety features, including Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), Forward Collision Warning (FCW), and Obstacle-Aware Acceleration. However, these features have less obvious visual signs, and it could make it more difficult to tell when Tesla transitions these features over to the FSD stack.
FSD-Based Autopilot
This technical migration of safety features fuels some speculation on our part. Tesla has refrained from updating or improving Autopilot for the most part, with the notable exception of adding Curvature Assist in 2024.38.
When core and basic vehicle control and safety features, including an Autosteer equivalent, run on the FSD stack, Tesla will likely make their move to make a new version of Autopilot the standard offering on its vehicles instead of the current legacy stack. This creates a consistent baseline while still differentiating the paid FSD package through its autonomous nature.
We’re excited to see what Tesla releases on this front - as it’ll have a massive impact on millions of drivers globally who don’t use FSD. The fact that this new safety feature has been confirmed to function on both HW3 and HW4 vehicles is a big plus - Tesla isn’t forgetting about older users in their rush to an autonomous future.
