FSD Beta 10.11 now going out to public testers

By Nuno Cristovao
New vector lanes
New vector lanes
@MarkHalleyPhd/Twitter

Tesla's latest FSD Beta, v10.11 is now going out to public testers. The beta is version 2022.4.5.15. For FSD Beta testers, it'll be the first update they receive that's based on a 2022 release.

Earlier this month Elon tweeted that the beta may go out as early as this past Tuesday. However, he then followed up that it was instead going to go out this past weekend.

Over the weekend we saw FSD Beta 10.11 go out to several employees, which Tesla uses as a final testing phase before releasing to the public.

Today we're finally seeing several public testers getting this build, but it may be a while before it goes out to everyone. Tesla looks at the release carefully as it's going out and can choose to slow it down, speed it up or stop it completely to fix any issues.

When Elon spoke about the next FSD Beta, he mentioned FSD Beta 10.12. This beta is version 10.11. It's not clear whether there was a misunderstanding or whether Tesla initially planned to increment the version.

However, this is a completely new beta for all public testers and it appears to be packed with improvements.

The most notable improvements appear to be new vector-based lanes and reduced slowdowns. An example of the new vector-based lanes is below. In addition to clearer lane markings, it appears that the whole lane will also be highlighted in blue when the car starts to perform a lane change.

New vector lanes
New vector lanes
@MarkHalleyPhd/Twitter

This beta is expected to hit Canada for the first time according to Elon, but there are no signs yet of it going north of the border.

Tesla will likely monitor it for several days in the US before releasing it to our northern neighbor.

The complete FSD Beta release notes are below:

- Upgraded modeling of lane geometry from dense rasters ("bag of points") to an autoregressive decoder that directly predicts and connects "vector space" lanes point by point using a transformer neural network. This enables us to predict crossing lanes, allows computationally cheaper and less error prone post-processing, and paves the way for predicting many other signals and their relationships jointly and end-to-end.

- Use more accurate predictions of where vehicles are turning or merging to reduce unnecessary slowdowns for vehicles that will not cross our path.

- Improved right-of-way understanding if the map is inaccurate or the car cannot follow the navigation. In particular, modeling intersection extents is now entirely based on network predictions and no longer uses map-based heuristics.

- Improved the precision of VRU detections by 44.9%, dramatically reducing spurious false positive pedestrians and bicycles (especially around tar seams, skid marks, and rain drops). This was accomplished by increasing the data size of the next-gen autolabeler, training network parameters that were previously frozen, and modifying the network loss functions. We find that this decreases the incidence of VRU-related false slowdowns.

- Reduced the predicted velocity error of very close-by motorcycles, scooters, wheelchairs, and pedestrians by 63.6%. To do this, we introduced a new dataset of simulated adversarial high speed VRU interactions. This update improves autopilot control around fast-moving and cutting-in VRUs.

- Improved creeping profile with higher jerk when creeping starts and ends.

- Improved control for nearby obstacles by predicting continuous distance to static geometry with the general static obstacle network.

- Reduced vehicle "parked" attribute error rate by 17%, achieved by increasing the dataset size by 14%. Also improved brake light accuracy.

- Improved clear-to-go scenario velocity error by 5% and highway scenario velocity error by 10%, achieved by tuning loss function targeted at improving performance in difficult scenarios.

- Improved detection and control for open car doors.

- Improved smoothness through turns by using an optimization-based approach to decide which road lines are irrelevant for control given lateral and longitudinal acceleration and jerk limits as well as vehicle kinematics.

- Improved stability of the FSD Ul visualizations by optimizing ethernet data transfer pipeline by 15%.

- Improved recall for vehicles directly behind ego, and improved precision for vehicle detection network.

Release Notes Explained

Here is a great video that explains Tesla's technical release notes and what improvements you can find in this release.

In addition to the improvements in this FSD Beta, testers can also expect to find these other features that were added in the 2022.4 update.

Range Display Calibration for LFP batteries

If you have a SR+ with an LFP battery, then you'll also receive this feature that charges your car to 100% to help improve battery calibration. LFP batteries have very similar voltages from a low state of charge to a high state of charge. If the battery isn't regularly charged to 100%, it can be difficult for the vehicle to know its state of charge, which could cause some issues.

Cabin Camera

Tesla is collecting additional analytics from the cabin camera to help develop additional features. Tesla is asking you to opt-in to cabin camera analytics if you'd like to help develop new features.

There's no word on what these new features may be, but it could be just about anything, such as the ability to send you a notification if it detects an animal in your car and you forgot to turn on Dog Mode.

Car Colorizer

We're probably all familiar with this feature by now that allows you to alter the exterior color of your vehicle. The color you pick is used in the car's visualizations, car menus and in the Tesla app. You can also view a video of Tesla's Car Colorizer feature.

Audio Sources

The ability to disable certain audio sources comes back in 2022.4. If there are audio sources that you don't use, such as TIDAL, Spotify, or TuneIn, you can now disable them.

When an audio source is disabled, it won't appear in the More Apps menu or in the Sources dropdown.

Icons in the Status Bar

2022.4 was released quite a while ago, so it's easy for FSD Beta testers to forget everything that is in this release and why they should be excited.

Some icons are now returning to the car's top status bar, such as Driver Profiles (while in park) and the Sentry Mode icon.

Save Dashcam Clips

You can now more easily save dashcam clips if you have the Dashcam viewer in your launcher. Since the dashcam viewer can't be used while driving, the icon now has a dual purpose. If you tap it while in Drive, your car will save the last ten minutes of footage.

Regenerative Braking in Autopilot

Additional regenerative braking is now used in Autopilot, which will be especially useful in FSD. The vehicle previously used regenerative braking while on AP, but it will now apply it at lower speeds that better match how a driver would use regenerative braking.

Windshield Wiper Defrost

If you have a new Tesla that was built in the past few months, then it may have windshield wiper heaters. If it does, then this is the software update that enables it.

Nearby Superchargers

You can once again view nearby Superchargers in the same way you could in Tesla's v10 software. The Superchargers icon now appears on the far side just like it used to.

This FSD Beta release is an exciting one that includes many new features with the updated FSD Beta build and in the public 2022.4 release. You can also view the full 2022.4 release notes.

Tesla's Dojo Project Faces Leadership Shakeup

By Kevin Armstrong
Dojo Leadership Shake up
Dojo Leadership Shake up
Tesla

Ganesh Venkataramanan, Tesla’s project lead for its ambitious Dojo supercomputer project for the past five years, has left the company. Bloomberg reported this development, stating that the news was confirmed by sources familiar with the matter. Peter Bannon, a former executive at Apple Inc. and a director at Tesla for the last seven years, has now taken the helm of the project.

Venkataramanan's departure from Tesla last month is now stirring conversations about the potential impacts on Tesla's future initiatives. His contributions to the Dojo project have been pivotal, especially in designing the custom D1 chip that powers the supercomputer. Venkataramanan, with his extensive experience, including a significant tenure at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), was a crucial asset in setting up Tesla’s AI hardware and silicon teams in 2016.

Dojo: A Cornerstone for Tesla’s Self-Driving Aspirations

The Dojo supercomputer is a critical element of Tesla's strategy to enhance its self-driving capabilities. Designed to train machine learning models integral to Tesla's autonomous systems, Dojo processes vast amounts of data captured by Tesla vehicles. This rapid data processing is essential for improving the company’s algorithms, with analysts suggesting that Dojo could be a significant competitive advantage for Tesla. In a recent estimation by Morgan Stanley, the project could potentially add $500 billion to Tesla’s value.

Elon Musk has been vocal about the company's commitment to the Dojo project, planning an investment exceeding $1 billion by the end of 2024. The project's importance was underscored in Tesla's decision to shift from relying on Nvidia Corp.’s supercomputers to developing Dojo, poised to rival systems from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and IBM.

Looking Ahead: Impact and Future Prospects

The recent leadership changes raise questions about the future direction of the Dojo project. Venkataramanan's exit, coupled with the departure of another critical artificial intelligence player from Tesla last year, Andrej Karpathy, signals a transition period for the company’s AI and self-driving teams.

However, Tesla's robust talent pool, blending experienced and emerging professionals, offers a silver lining. Bannon's promotion to lead the Dojo project is seen as a strategic move, leveraging his experience and insights gained from his tenure at Apple. Moreover, the recent installation of Dojo hardware in Palo Alto, California, marks a step forward in centralizing and enhancing the project’s capabilities.

Tesla’s ambitions for Dojo extend to making it one of the world’s top supercomputers. The company envisions reaching a computational capability of 100 exaflops* by October 2024, a testament to its commitment to advancing artificial intelligence and self-driving technology.

* Confused about "exaflops?" "Flops" stands for Floating Point Operations Per Second. It's a way to measure how fast a computer can process data. "Exa" means a billion billion, or 1, followed by 18 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000,000). So, when we say a computer can perform 100 exaflops, it can do 100 billion billion calculations per second. That's incredibly fast!

New Parking Visualizations and Custom Locking Sounds Also Coming in Tesla's Holiday Update

By Kevin Armstrong
Tesla is adding a new 'High Fidelity Park Assist' feature in this year's Holiday Update
Tesla is adding a new 'High Fidelity Park Assist' feature in this year's Holiday Update
Tesla

Following initial reactions to Tesla's 2023 Holiday Update, Elon Musk acknowledged the need for improvement, stating, "We need to step up our game." His post on X was followed by Tesla shedding more light on the Holiday Update than what was in the initial leak.

Call me old, but I remember a time when you bought a car, and that was it; the dealer and manufacturer didn’t give you anything else. So is the Tesla community acting a little bit spoiled here? Absolutely. But it also shows how high Tesla has set the bar with its previous Holiday Updates.

Initial Release and Feedback

The initial release of the 2023 Holiday Update, version 2023.44.25, received mixed reactions from the Tesla community, with some owners expressing disappointment over the lack of groundbreaking new features. But the newly announced features may serve as better stocking stuffers.

The initial rollout included something owners have been asking for, the blind spot monitor. The camera that turns on when you change lanes will now have a red color added if there is something in your blind spot. It’s not clear whether it will be accompanied by a tone.

Here are other features in the leaked update that are being tested by employees:

Navigation and Safety Features: Including symbols for speed cameras, stop signs, and traffic lights in navigation, and the automatic 911 call feature in case of an accident.

Trip Planning via Tesla Mobile App: Allowing for more detailed trip planning, including multiple stops and charging points.

Apple Podcasts Integration: Allowing users to sync with Apple devices for a seamless podcast experience, directly addressing the demand for a richer in-car entertainment system.

New Games and Enhancements: The update brought updates to Tesla Arcade, with Beach Buggy Racing and Polytopia Diplomacy updates, as well as the Vampire Survivors Chilling update.

Light Show Improvements: There’s a new light show that’s included with your vehicle. You’ll also be able to upload several light shows on a single USB drive and pick one from the vehicle, instead of having to use multiple USB drives, one for each light show.

More Live Sentry Mode Cameras: You will now be able to view the B-pillar cameras directly from the Tesla app. This brings the number of viewable cameras in the app up to seven. The only ones still missing are the alternative front-facing cameras that are telephoto and wide-angle, which wouldn’t bring much additional value. Although the B-pillars are viewable in the app with this update, they will still not be used to record during Dashcam or Sentry Mode events.

High-Fidelity Park Assist

Tesla's High Fidelity Park Assist
Tesla's new parking assist feature will dynamically recreate scenes in real-time
Tesla

In response to the feedback and Musk's statement, Tesla unveiled additional features in its updated holiday update, including an improved park assist with enhanced visualizations.

This feature provides a 3D reconstruction of the vehicle's surroundings while parking, akin to a 360-degree camera system found in other high-end vehicles. The system is clearly leveraging improvements to Tesla Vision to create the surrounding environment, such as cars, pillars and walls.

This feature also appears to change the color of objects depending on how close they are to your vehicle. In the image we can see the pillars are orange, but if we look closer, the object behind the vehicle is also orange near the bottom. The sides of the vehicles next to the Tesla also have a slight hint of orange, indicating their proximity.

However, it looks like this feature may be even better than it initially looks. The vehicles in the image aren’t just predefined 3D models that Tesla created, like the ones used in Autopilot visualizations. These models appear to be dynamically created using vision, so that no two cars would look alike, much more similar to what LiDar is able to achieve. The visualization provides a true representation of the environment around the vehicle. You can see that each vehicle is made up from layers and have blurred edges toward the rear, where the camera would have a hard time seeing.

These 3D models could be a sneak peek at the future of FSD visualizations.

High-Fidelity Park Assist Requirements

A big question on everyone’s mind is who will receive this new park assist feature. Tesla didn’t address this in their post on X besides providing a disclaimer that the features in the holiday release are subject to model and region availability. Tesla often likes to test features in select markets before making them available everywhere. It’s hard to say whether that will be the case here. There likely aren’t any legal ramifications around providing visualizations, so that’s a good sign that this feature will be available in most regions, either in the holiday update, or soon afterward.

However, there are still questions around which models or hardware will be required. From the image shared, we can see it’s offered on a Model Y, removing any speculation of it possibly requiring the HD radar in the new Model S/X. We also don’t think it will require FSD hardware 4.0, so the remaining questions are whether it requires MCU 3, or the FSD package.

Given that Tesla is calling this Park Assist, it doesn’t appear to be linked to Auto Park, which is a FSD package feature. When Tesla rolled out visual and audio alerts for vehicles without ultrasonic sensors, it called the feature Park Assist, and that was available to all owners.

Whether this improved Park Assist feature requires a vehicle with MCU 3 will depend on the level of processing power required. It’ll certainly require more than the current visualizations given that its building the scene in real-time, so we’re hopeful that it’ll work on MCU 2 vehicles too, but we just don’t have enough information right now to make the call.

Custom Lock Sounds

Soon you'll be able to choose a custom locking sound for your car
Soon you'll be able to choose a custom locking sound for your car
Not a Tesla App

Tesla also announced a fun and whimsical feature that allows owners to customize the lock sound of their Tesla. No longer will you need to listen to the car’s horn when it locks as you walk away. Now you’ll be able to customize the lock sound of the vehicle. Tesla is including several options, including sounds like a screaming goat, a jingle, a rubber ducky, a quack sound, an old school horn and applause. However, you’ll also be able to upload your own file to create a truly unique experience.

You can pick anything, from a bird’s tweet to a favorite video game sound. You’ll only be limited by the maximum upload file size, which according to a Tesla engineer, is a 1MB file in WAV format, which is roughly about 40 seconds at good quality.

This feature is possible due to the vehicle’s external pedestrian warning speaker. So if you have Tesla’s Boombox feature or your vehicle makes a sound when traveling under 20 MPH, then you should receive this fun enhancement.

Rear Seat Audio and Gaming

You'll now be able to play games on Tesla's rear screens
You'll now be able to play games on Tesla's rear screens
Tesla

Enhancing the Tesla Arcade experience, passengers in the rear seats can now play games on the rear touchscreen. This feature, especially when paired with Tesla Arcade’s compatibility with PS4, PS5, Xbox Controllers, and rear-screen Bluetooth Headsets, is a welcome addition for families and long trips.

Much like the new Model 3, which received rear audio over Bluetooth support in the 2023.38 update, the new Model S and Model X will also receive this ability in the holiday update.

New Game - Castle Doombad

Tesla announced one other feature in the 2023 holiday update that hadn’t been previously leaked, and that’s a new game called Castle Doombad. Castle Doombad is a single player tower defense, puzzle-like game that’s currently available on iOS and Android, but has an upcoming release on PC and the Nintendo Switch. This game is expected to require MCU 3.

Release Timeline

The rollout of the 2023 Holiday Update is expected to follow a similar timeline to last year. Tesla announced that the update will roll out starting next week. However, it’s not clear whether this will also include FSD Beta testers that are on a 2023.27 update.

Looking back at the 2022 Holiday Update, it started on December 13 and took about a week to get to the entire fleet.

Speculation on Future Features

Like a spoiled child on Christmas morning, Tesla owners still ask, “Is that it?” Well… possibly, but there may be more to look forward to early next year as Tesla builds off of the new High-Fidelity Park Assist feature.

Advanced Smart Summon: Upgrading the Smart Summon feature to be more intuitive and efficient, especially in complex parking scenarios.

Reverse Summon / Park Seek: What happened to Tesla dropping its passengers and driver off at the location and then finding a parking spot on its own?

Enhanced FSD Visualizations: Expanding the Full Self-Driving visualizations to more regions or models or completely recreating the FSD visualizations using the same neural networks Tesla is using for the High-Fidelity Park Assist feature.

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Although we share official Tesla release notes, we are not affiliated with Tesla Motors. We are Tesla fans and supporters.

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