Tesla lists Robo-taxi as now being in development

By Kevin Armstrong
Tesla lists the Robo-Taxi as being in development
Tesla lists the Robo-Taxi as being in development
KBB

Tesla's Q2 earnings presentation listed products in production and development, and interesting enough, Robo-Taxi appears on the last line as being 'in development.'

Elon Musk publicly discussed the idea of a fully autonomous vehicle at the Giga Texas opening in April. Two weeks later, he briefly talked about Robo-Taxi in his 2022 first-quarter earnings call .

The product was not mentioned during this quarter's earnings call, but Robo-Taxi could not be missed in the report to investors.

In April, Elon Musk said, “But it’s fundamentally optimized to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile or cost per kilometer, accounting for everything. And so it’s, I think, going to be a very powerful product.” Musk says his vision of Robo-Taxi is a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, and he thinks it could be coming soon. “Where we aspire to reach volume production of that in 2024. So, I think that really will be a massive driver of Tesla’s growth.”

Tesla lists the Robo-Taxi as being in development
Tesla lists the Robo-Taxi as being in development
Tesla

Of course, for Robo-Taxi to succeed, Full Self Driving (FSD) will have to be completely functional, which is closer to reality, according to the CEO. “We have now deployed our FSD beta with city streets driving capability to over 100,000 owners.

They are very happy with the capability of the system, and we will continue to improve it every week.” Musk says Tesla has now driven more than 35 million miles with the beta FSD. He believes that is more miles than all other vehicle manufacturers combined, “so, that mileage is growing exponentially.” said Musk.

The in-development project explains recent comments Musk made to the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley interview (interview below).

Elon said FSD is the difference between the company being worth a lot or not very much. “Autonomy is a monumental breakthrough,” said Musk.

He also spoke candidly about FSD, “the sheer amount of work required to do this boggles the mind.” Musk admitted FSD is a bigger challenge than he originally predicted, “I’ve seen a lot of tough technology problems and solving real-world AI such that a car can drive itself is one of the hardest problems I’ve ever seen. It is way harder than I originally thought, by far.”

Even admitting how complex and challenging FSD is, Musk is still confident that it will be fully operational this year. If that happens, Robo-Taxis will be hailed soon as well.

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Tesla Smoking While Supercharging? A Look at What's Actually Happening

By Karan Singh
Hot_Engineering3140 on Reddit

Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.

If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.

Tesla Smoking While Charging

If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.

Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.

Why Does It Happen?

When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.

Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.

In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.

Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.

Tesla Improves YouTube App With Smoother Playback

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.

Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.

YouTube Improvements

The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.

While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.

Intel Inside

The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.

With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.

Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.

Chromium Web App

Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.

As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.

However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.

We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.

Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.

If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.

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