Over the past few years Tesla has released a major version of their car's software every year (v10 update, v9 update). This year we have been anticipating version 11. Elon Musk has teased it several times and has said that it will include features we've been wanting and features we didn't know we wanted.
The past few Tesla releases have been unusual and have only contained minor changes and bug fixes as Tesla appears to be keeping features in v11 hidden.
The anticipation has been building and now it looks like v11 has been leaked on a redesigned Model S test vehicle.
A major focus of this release appears to be personalization. When examining the UI, a lot of the elements appear to be customizable, where a user could possibly choose which icons or apps they'd like to show up. Elon Musk has previously tweeted that Tesla would allow multiple layouts in the future. He could have been hinting at these features in v11.
In the first image we can see this new tile-like interface, where you will presumingly be able to select which tiles you'd like to appear. For example, you may choose to have Music, Car Visualizations, Maps, Calendar, Energy Graph and many others. It'll be interesting to see how many choices Tesla really offers here and how they adapt this to other vehicles.
When we take a closer look at the bottom bar which normally houses a consistent car navigation and is the main way to get to climate controls, seat heaters and other apps, it looks like this will also become customizable. From the image we can see that the nav no longer takes up the full width of the screen and that in this image the seat heaters are right next to one another, which is very different from what Tesla has offered in the past.
There are now many apps and features in Tesla vehicles where some of them now require multiple taps to get to, and making this navigation customizable makes a lot of sense. For example if a user relies on the Phone app heavily, they will now be able to access it with one-tap instead of two. Like-wise, if you don't live in a cold climate, it's almost silly to have seat heaters and the rear window defroster take up multiple spaces in this prime real estate area.
We have recently seen buttons removed or moved around in recent updates. One such example is that the Voice Commands button has been removed and is currently only accessible through the buttons on the steering wheel, leaving the passenger without a way to use voice commands. We expect this button to return with v11.
The former top strip which contained car information and quick actions such as the time, Bluetooth, HomeLink and other functions have been moved and appear as a vertical strip on the left side of the screen.
It looks like right beneath this, we will see another big feature which appears to be a "Quick Menu," which will allow you to access the car's most often used features. Upon tapping it you will be presented with quick-function buttons such as lock car, open frunk, open glove box, display brightness, mirror and steering wheel adjustments and others.
Some of these features were fairly accessible before, but others required digging through the Car Controls menu, so this should make changing some settings much quicker. There doesn't appear to be a clear indication in this menu, but given the same square tile-like buttons, we would also expect these tiles to be customizable.
We also get a quick-peek at some of the other car menus. It looks like this particular version of the car (remember this is a refreshed Model S, but unclear whether it's Plaid or not), will also feature a "Drag Strip Mode." It's not clear which models this will apply to but it appears to be a new launch control system.
Continuing looking at this menu, a few other things stick out. We can see there is an option for "Smart Shift," which will allow the car to shift into drive or reverse for you. We knew this feature would be included in the refreshed Model S / X, but it's certainly possible that Tesla will bring this feature to all existing AP 2+ vehicles. We wouldn't necessarily expect it, but it's certainly possible. We also recently discovered how this feature will work.
We also see that there is a new option to turn on/off "Media on Drive," which gives you control whether you'd like the media player to automatically open when you put the car into drive.
The menu on the left looks very familiar with some minor changes. We no longer have the Quick Settings option at the top, which the Quick Menu from the home screen seems to have replaced. We also see a new "Trips," tab, which could be for more precise navigation settings, and possibly allowing for multi-stop destinations (way-points), which Elon Musk said was coming last September.
There are sure to be many more features included in this huge v11 release, but these are the major features we can see looking through these few images.
Some of these features will be slightly different on other vehicles as Tesla has to adapt them to work on a vertical screen for previous Model S / X vehicles and also make adjustments for the Model 3 / Y which need to include car visualizations on the main display.
We are all super excited for this highly anticipated release which appears to focus heavily on personalization.
If you hop into your Tesla and say ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’ after pressing the Voice Command button, there is a good chance it’ll reply with “Hello!” This is the newest and most interesting piece of news pointing us to the conclusion that a Tesla voice assistant is on the way.
Previously, if you tried this, it would simply return “Command not understood.” This is the first time the vehicle is responding and interacting with the user.
Experience It Yourself
You’ll need to have your vehicle language set to English. Once that’s done, you can use the voice command button on your steering wheel or yoke - for the Model 3 and Model Y, push the right wheel button, and for the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck, press the button. Then go ahead and say Hi or Hello.
The Hello! response may even have regional differences. For a German Tesla owner, after setting his language to English, the response came back as “Hallo.” We’re interested to see what the responses may be in other regions, so let us know if you notice anything interesting.
We’ve tried a few other basic things, but it seems that, for now, the vehicle only replies to a simple greeting. Asking it what time it is or the $TSLA stock price doesn’t seem to do much yet - unless you’re in China with the updated Smart Assistant.
Not a Tesla App
Server-Side Update
This update appears to be happening over Tesla’s voice system backend and doesn’t require the Holiday Update. Users who aren’t on the Holiday Update are reporting that they’re getting this new response as well.
We already know that Tesla interprets speech remotely, and the driver’s voice is not processed in the vehicle. Instead, the voice snippet is transmitted to Tesla’s servers, where Tesla processes it and sends a response back to the vehicle so that the vehicle can interpret it. This is unlikely to change with a smart assistant, as Elon Musk has already said that Grok will still process data server-side instead of on-device.
Many users recently also noticed significant improvements to voice commands, saying that the system understands them better and that responses now come back faster.
All of these things point to a new backend system for voice processing that Tesla is testing. It’s not unusual for a company to switch to a new backend process but keep the capabilities the same as the legacy system until it’s ready to roll out the new features. At that point, it’s simply a flip of a switch to allow the new capabilities.
The new smart assistant that was rolled out in China is mostly a backend change, with the in-vehicle experience largely remaining the same. The activation method (button press) and user interface remain the same. What changed is the response that comes back from the server, and the assistant gained a voice. The new voice we receive with a smart assistant could very well be the new voice users are experiencing in the navigation system in newer vehicles.
Below is a video of the voice assistant in China:
Vehicle Support - Intel?
When China received the Smart Assistant, it was locked to cars equipped with AMD Ryzen processors only. Shortly after its initial launch, it became available to older cars with Intel Atom processors as well.
However, we’re not sure whether it would apply to legacy Model S and Model X owners. A legacy vehicle owner had their vehicle report “Command not understood” when they tried the ’Hi’ voice command.
Grok for Tesla
Elon has previously mentioned that Tesla vehicles would receive Grok AI. Grok, as of yet, still doesn’t have live speech support like other LLM models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. However, a major update to Grok just brought massively improved image generation via a new model called Aurora.
xAI has been hard at work improving Grok, and we’re sure that live speech support is on its way soon. Once that feature arrives on X, Tesla will likely be well-positioned to enable a Grok-powered smart assistant fleet-wide with a flick of a switch.
Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.
Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.
Steam Launch
When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.
In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.
However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.
SteamOS Update
The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.
Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.
Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles
Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.
AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.
While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.
The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.
Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?
The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.
While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.
We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.
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