New Model S UI Coming to All Teslas, possibly v11

On June 10th Tesla showed off the new Model S Plaid and it’s completely redesigned interface. The new UI contains many new features and enhancements, such the ability to customize the buttons at the bottom of the screen so that you can have your most used apps easily accessible. It also includes the ability to drag and drop apps between the left side and right side of the screen. A new mini player also makes music controls always easily accessible. You can read about all the new features in the new UI, which we covered last month.

Since the day of the event, everyone has wanted to know whether this new UI would be carried over to previous cars, since the cars' displays differ quite a bit. Previous Model S and X vehicles contain vertical displays, and the Model 3 and Model Y do not contain an instrument cluster, so people started to wonder whether Tesla would be able to adapt the new UI for these other dimensions.

Elon took to Twitter and confirmed that a new UI will indeed be coming to all Teslas. We anticipate that this new UI will be similar to the UI in the new Model S, although Elon was not specific on Twitter. Elon simply said that an “updated UI coming with FSD wide release,” which doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the same as the UI in the new Model S. However, Tesla has never had different UIs for different vehicles in the past. Even when they overhauled the UI various times in the past, the changes always trickled down to older vehicles as well.

Yes, updated UI coming with FSD wide release. All cars with FSD computer will have new “mind of car” view. All 3/Y can be upgraded to have FSD computer.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2021

It’s clear however that the UI needs some big changes before it can work on older vehicles. We may see some features dropped or changed. For example, on the Model 3 and Model Y, the left side of the screen is used for car visualizations and takes up a significant amount of the screen. Tesla could allow stacking of apps on the right side or the cars may be limited to a single app at a time.

In December of last year, Elon said that we will have multiple display options, so that feature may be included in this update.

Although we may not be able to hide the car visualizations completely, we may be able to choose how big or small they are on the screen. It would be great to see an option where the car visualizations are hidden completely and we merely keep a small window with the important information, such as current speed, speed limit and Autopilot details.

As for the vertical screened Model S and Model X, it’s possible Tesla may just stack the apps vertically instead of horizontally and the rest of the layout would remain largely unchanged since those cars include an instrument cluster.

Elon mentions that the new UI will come with the FSD wide release, which honestly we don’t know when that’s coming. However Elon has said recently that he expects FSD to be ready “soon.” It’s been pushed back several times since we first expected it in April, but it looks like Tesla may be getting close. We expect the FSD beta to be limited to beta testers initially, but hopefully it won’t have to wait too long after that.

The other tidbit Elon teases is that the new UI will include the “mind of the car” view. We covered this before and in short, we expect this to be new and improved car visualizations. As Tesla gets better at understanding and interpreting the world around us, the car visualizations also improve and we think this will be a major step forward in what we see on the screen.

We don’t know exactly what the future holds, but it’s exciting to hear that a new UI will be coming soon and new car visualizations will be coming soon.

Update: Tesla delivered v11 with an updated UI based off of the new Model S in the 2021 Holiday Update.

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Will Tesla Launch a 'Robotaxi' Network With Tesla Drivers?

During Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, Tesla talked about its plan for its upcoming robotaxi network and even showed off a design for the app that would allow customers to request vehicles, much like Uber and Lyft.

While Tesla plans to unveil the robotaxi, officially now called CyberCab this August, a true autonomous taxi is at the very least, a couple of years away. So why is Tesla so eager to show off an app and start offering a Tesla taxi service?

in 2023 Uber had a revenue of 37.28 billion, while Lyft had a much smaller revenue of 4.4 billion. For comparison, Tesla’s revenue last year was 96.77 billion. A taxi service, even one operated by humans can be incredibly lucrative. While Tesla’s ultimate goal may be an automated taxi service, they may be itching to get into the space.

Tesla’s robotaxi was initially supposed to be a taxi service owners would lend their vehicles to. While that’s still the plan, Tesla wants their own vehicles to be a part of the service as well.

Will the Robotaxi Service Start With Tesla Drivers?

Tesla comparing themselves to Airbnb and Uber during their earnings call is intriguing. While Tesla can start producing robotaxis almost whenever they want, it’d likely be smart to wait until autonomy is solved so they’re not limiting themselves to current FSD hardware.

While full autonomy is likely several years away, Tesla seems to be eager to make this push toward a Tesla-owned service. Is Tesla thinking about operating their own Uber-like service? Tesla could be thinking about releasing their future robotaxi app and service in “beta,” letting current Tesla owners operate their own vehicles on the service.

This could result in several benefits for Tesla, not only letting them test their service but also opening up another revenue stream. This would allow Tesla to start operating their robotaxi network as soon as this year, and then slowly replace drivers and owner vehicles with Tesla-owned robotaxis.

Tesla Shows Off Robotaxi App

Tesla showed off it's robotaxi app

At the earnings call, Tesla also showed off a design of their robotaxi app. While it feels early to design an app for a service that could be years away, Tesla appears to be preparing itself for the future and getting customers excited about the prospect.

Tesla showed off five screens of the app, essentially showing how you’d request a robotaxi, how you can view its progress, and control certain features of the vehicle. Through the various screens, you can see most of Tesla’s Autopilot features coming to fruition in terms of autonomy, such as summon, self-driving and eventually Autopark.

Summon - Much like Tesla has re-thought the interior of a car and so many features, you can see the same mechanics applied to the app. To request a vehicle, you simply hold down a summon button and you’ll be presented with an estimate of when a vehicle will arrive.

Set Preferences and Destination - On the second screen, you can see the vehicle’s current location on a 3D map, possibly alluding to future FSD visualizations. It also lets you set your destination and set the climate temperature to your preference.

Trip Progress - While you’re traveling in the vehicle, you’ll be able to view trip information as well as set entertainment options.

Recap

Tesla had a lot to talk about during their earnings call and specifically about the Robotaxi — more information was revealed than ever before.

While there are various things at play to make a service like this come together, we can easily separate them out into separate components.

There’s the robotaxi itself, which Musk recently said would be similar to Tesla’s next-gen vehicle without a steering wheel. However, during this earnings call, he revealed that Tesla will save its new “unboxed” manufacturing process for the robotaxi and use a more traditional method for their next vehicle.

Then there’s FSD itself, while it’s crucial to operating a driverless robotaxi network, it’s not necessary to start a Tesla taxi service.

The last piece is the ride-hailing component itself and how it’s managed, and Tesla was happy to show this off, which makes us believe that it may be closer to reality than many think. While Tesla needs all three of these components to come together to operate a true robotaxi network, they piece them together separately, much like they’ve done with Autopilot. Initially, Tesla only released auto-steer then slowly added on summon, Autopark and city driving.

When we look back at Tesla five years from now, we may very well look back to this earnings call and say this was the pivotal moment when Tesla started transitioning to a services company.

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Tesla Reveals Robotaxi App and Names the Robotaxi the CyberCab

Tesla has invested billions of dollars over the years toward vehicle autonomy. The mission continues as Elon Musk and Tesla now prepare to unveil their ride-hailing product, Robotaxi this August. Or, as Musk called it on Tuesday, Tesla CyberCab.

Early Days

Five years ago, during Tesla’s Autonomy Investor Day in April 2019, Elon Musk said he felt “very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla in the following year [2020]”. At the time, Musk added a bolder claim, predicting that Tesla wouldn’t even make cars with steering wheels or pedals by 2022. While timeliness may not be Musk’s strong suit, he has a track record for getting things done that others were unwilling to try or thought were impossible. Musk later admitted he can be overly optimistic and said “sometimes I am not on time, but I get it done.” 

Now, 5 years later, we have the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August 8th. After the release of FSD v12, it’s clear that we’re much closer to autonomy than we were in 2019, although FSD v12 is still a far cry from full autonomy.

While Tesla still has the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August, Tesla announced yesterday that it’d be prioritizing a simpler “next-gen” model that could be released by early 2025.

Latest Updates

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.

think of it [Tesla] as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates

Tesla = Uber + AirBnb

Later on, Elon Musk unveiled that the new service will operate and result in a mix between Uber and Airbnb where the Tesla driver decides if and when he wants his Tesla to be used and by whom. Tesla stated:

“We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App.”

Tesla’s CEO clarified that the owners will be able to add or remove their car from the fleet “whenever they want” adding that it will be up to them to decide if they want to only let the car be used “by friends and family or only by five-star users or by anyone at any time”. The flexible program will, just like Airbnb, allow the owners to take the car out of the market when they want.

The upcoming ride-hailing service will enable users to easily request a Tesla vehicle, control the car's temperature, monitor its real-time location, and adjust the audio system. The only question is when.

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