Elon mentioned this summer that Tesla would be opening up their Superchargers to other vehicles. Just a few months later and Tesla has now opened up their first Superchargers to non-Teslas vehicles.
Tesla is starting the program in The Netherlands where Tesla and non-Tesla EVs use the same CCS port. Initially Tesla is making ten Supercharging locations available to other EVs in The Netherlands, but the goal is eventually open up all Superchargers worldwide.
Other vehicles will be able to charge at Tesla Superchargers by utilizing the Tesla app. This is a big advantage for Tesla as it gets non-Tesla owners into the Tesla ecosystem.
Tesla opens up Superchargers
@olympusdev_/Twitter
In order to charge, owners will need to create a Tesla account and add payment information. From there they will be able to start a charging session by choosing their stall and tapping Start Charging. While in the app, they'll also be able to browse Tesla models and even place an order for a Tesla.
Price
The price that Tesla charges for Supercharging varies by region and sometimes time of day, because electrical rates vary by region and time of day as well.
It looks like non-Tesla owners in The Netherlands will be paying about €0.57/kWh. The price is significantly higher than what Tesla owners pay at the same chargers. In fact, it's almost 2.5 times more costly than charging a Tesla.
Membership
Tesla will also be offering a membership for non-Tesla vehicles. The membership will give owners lower pricing per kilowatt hour. In The Netherlands, the membership will cost €12.99/month and let you charge for the lower kWh pricing that is offering for Tesla vehicles.
It's likely that the pricing for the charging membership and Supercharger use will be similar in other markets.
Order a Tesla right from the Tesla App
@olympusdev_/Twitter
We don't yet know what the membership cost will be, or how much it will lower charging per kWh, but it looks like the membership will only be available to non-Tesla owners. We imagine the rate with a membership will drop considerably but will remain higher than what Tesla owners will pay.
Why This is Good for Tesla Owners
The topic of whether Tesla should expand Supercharging to non-Tesla vehicles can bring differing opinions. Most Tesla owners are worried about a degraded experience at a Supercharger if Tesla opens it up to other EVs.
Superchargers, especially in the Bay Area are already congested, Tesla owners have had to wait over an hour just to start charging, so I can definitely understand their reasoning for being cautious with Tesla expanding Superchargers to other vehicles.
Electric vehicles are the future, there's no doubting that. Along with more EVs there will come more charging solutions.
Back in 2012 Tesla created the first Supercharger because there weren't any options for fast DC charging. Superchargers aren't meant to be a revenue stream for Tesla, but something Tesla needed to offer in order to be able to sell their vehicles.
Tesla has a choice here, they can keep their charging network exclusive to Tesla owners and keep Supercharging as a profit neutral service, or they can turn it into a revenue stream and become the de-facto standard for EV charging.
By turning Tesla's Superchargers into a revenue stream Tesla will be able to more quickly expand their reach, resulting in more Supercharger locations for Tesla and non-Tesla owners.
There will be a large player in the EV charging infrastructure. If Tesla doesn't open up their Superchargers to other vehicles, they're likely to see someone do it and become the predominate player.
The result will be a worse experience for Tesla owners. If Tesla isn't the major charging network, Tesla owners will be left in a less than ideal situation. They'll need to buy an expensive adapter to go from Tesla's proprietary connection to the standard CCS port, or they'll need to find another charging station.
Tesla owners will also be the ones that will need to download another app, create an account, add payment information, etc. They'll need to do all of that, instead of what they do today. Just plug in.
Tesla Owners Have Advantage
Charging a Tesla at a Supercharger will always be the ideal solution and provide the best charging experience. Not only will Tesla owners benefit from faster charging times by having your car precondition the battery for optimized charging, but they'll also have a seamless charging experience that doesn't require them to open the Tesla app, choose their stall and press the start or stop charging buttons.
Idle fees are only charged when the Supercharger is more than 50% full. Non-Tesla cars will not be exempt from idle fees and will need to follow all the same rules as Tesla vehicles.
Idle Fees
In order to prevent cars from taking up precious Supercharging spots while other vehicles are waiting to charge, Tesla started charging idle fees several years ago. The idle fees are high and often much higher than what the cost of charging.
CSS port in the US?
So as Tesla expands their Supercharging network and offers non-Tesla vehicles fast DC charging, we face the question, why is Tesla still using their proprietary adapter? Sure, it was necessary in 2012, but in 2021 where so many things have changed, it doesn't add many benefits over a CCS connection. It prevents Tesla owners from charging at CCS stations, it prevents some non-Tesla owners from their at Tesla chargers and it requires Tesla to build and manage multiple parts for their cars.
We believe Tesla will switch to the CCS charge port globally in the future, instead of using their proprietary Tesla port. Tesla will slowly switch over Superchargers to use a CCS connection and offer an adapter at the station for non-CCS Teslas. This will also allow Tesla owners to charge at any charging locations without purchasing an expensive CCS adapter.
Two years ago Tesla launched their first V3 chargers, capable of charging at up to 1,000 miles per hour and Tesla said they'll be adding WiFi capability to Superchargers in the future.
Like other automakers, Tesla issues vehicle recalls (many involving minor software tweaks) when a
vehicle feature or hardware needs to be changed.
With the release of their latest
app update (version 4.9), Twitter user Tesla_App_iOS, noticed that Tesla added a new API that could potentially show vehicle recall information.
It didn't appear that the Tesla app was yet using this new API, but just a couple days later it can
now be seen in the Service area of the app.
The service section of the app is loaded via a webview, which is essentially a webpage that the app
loads when the user navigates to that section.
This allows Tesla to make changes to that section without requiring an app update to display new
information.
Tesla, along with other car manufacturers, maintains a database of applicable recalls based on the
VIN of each respective vehicle, so Tesla already has all the information needed in order to
display recalls for your specific vehicle.
In the App
The Tesla app can now displayed vehicle recalls
Upon navigating to the Service section, Tesla will list any recalls available for your vehicle.
Tapping an individual recall will give you additional information.
Tesla also has a Learn More button that links off to Tesla's site, where they display detailed
information about the given recall.
Notifications
Since the feature appears to just have gone live recently, it's not clear yet whether Tesla will send
a push notification to the owner when there is a new recall issued.
A notification could prompt the user to schedule service for critical recalls.
What is currently unknown is if software recalls will also be included in the app, or if it'll be
limited to recalls that require Tesla service.
Some software-based recalls, like the removal of Boombox while in drive are displayed in the
vehicle's release notes.
This is a welcome new feature to the Tesla app that makes managing recalls simple and convenient.
You can now easily look at or confirm if there are any outstanding recalls with just a few taps.
The feature is available on iOS and Android.
It looks like this feature may not be available in every region yet, as some users like TeslaChinaRider are not seeing it available in the app yet.
Tesla has a history of testing new features in select markets before releasing it broadly. Hopefully that's the case with this feature as well.
New car models used in FSD Beta 10.12 visualization
mariapazz000/Twitter
The first signs of Tesla's FSD Beta 10.12 finally surfaced
yesterday as Tesla employees started receiving the internal beta.
The internal beta initially had a version of 2022.12.3.10, but
it looks like Tesla has aleady issued an update with version 2022.12.3.15 (FSD Beta 10.12.1).
It's not clear yet whether this will be the exact version that
will be rolled out to public testers or if additional updates will be made.
If Tesla finds any major issues, they'll want to fix them before
rolling out the update to external testers.
New Car Models
New car models
WholeMarsBlog/Twitter
FSD Beta 10.12 introduces new vehicle models for almost every
vehicle type.
Some of the vehicles have been completely redesigned and are
more detailed and realistic looking than the previous models.
For example, a sedan now has wheels, windows and a glass roof,
instead of the previous simplistic look that resembled a Model S keyfob.
New Brake Lights
Although brakes lights were already displayed as of beta 9.0, Tesla is now displaying the third brake light as well, which
has been required in the US since 1986.
Open Doors
FSD Beta 10.12 will now display open doors
WholeMarsBlog/Twitter
FSD Betas have been able to detect and stop or go around
vehicles with open doors for a while now, but Tesla will now show open doors in the
visualization.
When a surrounding vehicle's door is open, the 3D model will
also show the open door and highlight the door in orange.
With this release, FSD Beta now detects and visualizes turn
signals in addition to brake lights.
The car will reportedly react to turn signals it has detected as
well, which should help understand the intentions of other vehicles.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
The last major FSD Beta release was version 10.11, which was
first seen more than two months ago.
Tesla has been working on beta 10.12 for a while now and the
amount of changes included in this update are huge according to Elon.
Musk said that due to the amount of changes in this beta, we can
expect two steps forward and one step back.
This is a big one! Expect some two steps forward, one step back
situations. These will be great ironed in point releases, hence ~10.12.2 or 10.13 for wider beta release.
- Elon Musk
There will be some issues, and in certain situations FSD may
have regressed.
Tesla plans to fix any issues that arise with minor revisions to
this release. Expect to see additional FSD Beta 10.12 releases such as 10.12.1 and 10.12.2 in the coming
weeks.
Current Beta Testers
As we have seen with other recent betas, it may be a while until
all current beta testers receive this latest beta.
With beta 10.11, we saw two revisions before the majority of
testers received the beta. We may see a similar situation with this update, given the amount of changes
that were made.
If you're a current beta tester, you may be waiting a couple
weeks before getting this updated FSD Beta.
Additional Testers
There haven't been any signs of Tesla adding additional beta
testers in the US since late 2021.
Elon has previously said that he hopes that Tesla will be able
to add more testers who have opted in to the beta and have a Safety Score of 95 or greater in later revisions of beta 10.12.
We have the technical releases notes for FSD Beta 10.12, but
Reddit user asimo3089 did a great job at interpreting the release notes to give us a better
understanding of what Tesla has improved in this update.
1. Your car better understands what is and is not drivable space.
This makes it more confident in easy situations, and more capable in tricky situations. Your car can
also now use medians for difficult left turns, and accelerates quicker to complete turns.
2. Your car now has a better idea of objects blocking camera views.
Creeping should be less scary.
3. Improved path predictions of where other others on the road will
be. This gives your car better decision making for turns.
4. Sounds like: Your car will drive itself to safety much more
smoothly if your car finds itself in a place it shouldn't be. Better problem solving?
5. Your car should better see the lanes on the road, and how many
of them there are, thanks to new data. This gives better turn confidence and path planning during a turn.
6. Your car is now trained on 180,000 new clips related to what
lanes look like.
7. Your car is less likely to panic brake in a yellow light
scenario, and has a better understanding of lane guidance when going through an intersection.
8. Road edges and road lines are now more accurate.
9. Your car now better understands visibility from the cameras,
thanks to 30,000 new video clips of training data.
10. Speeds of motorcycles, pedestrians and cyclists is now more
accurate. Plus, your car now better predicts which direction a pedestrian is walking.
11. Your car is now less likely to confuse a parked car and an
idling car thanks to 41,000 new clips of training data. This should result in fewer "phantom brakes" or
silly lane changes.
12. Your car now better understands objects that are far away from
you.
13. Your car will plan a better path around vehicles with car doors
open.
14. Objects that are not pedestrians, cyclists, etc, should have
more accurate speed predictions.
15. When changing into an adjacent lane, your car will look further
ahead at vehicle speeds. If somebody up ahead is braking, your car will handle it more
comfortably.
16. Your car used to only predict acceleration (Not speed) for
objects moving adjacently. Now your car will predict acceleration of all moving objects including
objects accelerating across your path.
17. New 3D models for vehicles on your screen. You'll also be shown
vehicles with their doors open.
18. Tesla retired a few old systems and gained 2 frames per second,
per camera, resulting in better performance while self driving.
FSD Beta 10.12 is currently only available to employees, but we
may see a wider release in the next couple days that includes public testers.
However, it could be several weeks before all current testers
receive this update.
More details will surely be uncovered about this beta in the
next few days. Stay tuned for more.
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