Everyone loves receiving new updates for their Tesla. But do you know what the version numbers mean and why there are so many versions? We take a look at exactly what Tesla version numbers imply and how Tesla creates and branches their code.
What It Means
A recent Tesla update had version number 2021.32.201b7f33580a5f. Let’s take a look at how Tesla numbers their versions and what it means.
The first portion of the version number, 2021, is the year of the release. The second, 32, is the week number of the year. Since Tesla has a history of releasing a major update every four weeks, you’ll almost always see this number in increments of four. After the week number is the revision of the build.
The first build of a release usually does not have a revision and it’s simply known as 2021.32. This is the first build and is only rolled out to a very small portion of the Tesla fleet, if at all.
As Tesla gathers fleet data and learns about any issues, they’ll make improvements and fixes to the release. The next update will have a revision number, such as '.1'. Revision numbers go by incrementally, although not always by one. The number is often arbitrary, but it should reflect the amount of changes in the release. For example, going from 2021.32.1 to 2021.32.2 would often indicate a smaller change than jumping to 2021.32.20.
The revision number should be looked at as a single number and not as a decimal. For example, version 2021.32.2 is an earlier build of 2021.32.20.
Hash
The seemingly random numbers and letters you'll see at the end of a version number is a unique key called a hash that is used to identify that code. A hash is used every time new code is added to a code base and the ones we see in an update are used to identify that specific release.
Gradual Updates
Tesla will often start with a release such as 2021.32 and they’ll gradually roll it out to some vehicles, get data, make fixes and then roll out another release. By the time an update is in wide release, it likely has gone through various revisions and will have a higher revision number.
Tesla releases their updates gradually so that they can minimize any potential issues and keep everyone safe. If there are any major issues with a release, it likely only impacted a smaller portion of the fleet.
Tesla has begun reaching out to customers to replace the high-voltage battery pack seals in Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured between 2021 and 2022. In particular, this impacts vehicles between January 2021 and September 22, 2022.
Tesla is notifying impacted owners through a notification and message in the Tesla app.
Plunger Replacement
The high-voltage battery port plungers intended for internal water leak egress (also known as flood ports) are being replaced with improved parts. The new parts are designed to be more robust against external water ingress due to submersion during flooding or other high-severity water impacts.
Tesla specifically notes that no action is needed from owners at this time - once the parts are available, owners will be notified with a notification from the app to encourage them to schedule a service appointment.
This voluntary recall is likely related to the incident where the fully submerged Model X caught on fire underwater, requiring first responders to wait for the battery to burn out before recovering the vehicle. That incident occurred back in October 2023.
While Submarine Mode is a fun Easter Egg, it doesn’t actually improve your vehicle’s water rating.
Service Details
Taking a look at the Service Bulletin (SB-25-16-002), Tesla will be replacing all five flood ports and, if necessary, the breather plugs and flood port doors. Tesla will require you to take your vehicle in for this appointment, which should take approximately 90 minutes for the Model S, and approximately 60 minutes for the Model X. Tesla’s Mobile Rangers won’t be able to complete this activity in your driveway.
The part being replaced is the plug.
Not a Tesla App
Because this is a voluntary recall, Tesla will be offering this as a goodwill service for any owners who have exceeded their Model S or Model X limited battery warranty - so don’t hesitate to take your vehicle in.
Following a period of radio silence from Tesla on FSD updates, Elon Musk has finally hinted that progress is continuing behind the scenes on FSD and that “Several major improvements are incoming.” We’re pretty excited - it has been over 100 days since the last FSD update, and we haven’t heard much since then.
The latest versions of FSD were V13.2.8 for AI4 vehicles and V12.6.2 for HW3 vehicles, both of which were released in January of this year — almost four months ago. While development has been ongoing internally, many have been wondering what the next public release will be. Will it be FSD V13.3, or will we jump straight to FSD V14.
Decoupled Releases & Spring Update
Tesla has now begun pushing Early Access users the 2025 Spring Update without an FSD version change. This means that we can expect the next FSD update to likely be based on the 2025.14 branch.
It’s worth noting that Tesla can add improvements to FSD at any time - and sometimes they do make minor changes without incrementing release numbers - small flag changes in FSD’s software to address how it does a specific task, or what data is uploaded.
With all that said, we expect the Spring Update to begin going out to more of the fleet in the coming days. We’re currently seeing about 58% of the fleet on the Spring Update, and only 30% of the fleet on the older 2025.8 January Update.
Not A Tesla App received information that an upcoming update was set to bring features from other AI4 vehicles to the Cybertruck, including Start FSD from Park, Unpark, Actually Smart Summon, and more. This update was intended to bring it closer to feature parity with the rest of Tesla’s AI4 fleet, but for now, Cybertruck remains the redheaded stepchild of the fleet.
We’re still confident that Tesla is working on this, and the continued delays on the release of an FSD update could point to the Cybertruck and a lack of data continuing to be a pain point for Tesla’s AI team. Cybertruck owners, including the author, have noted that FSD-equipped Cybertrucks continue to upload several hundred gigabytes or more of data per month. This topped out at nearly 1.9 TB of data uploaded in April 2025 for the author.
That’s a massive amount of data - and other users on social media have mentioned much the same for their own Cybertrucks. Tesla needs as much data as possible to tune the FSD models, and given the small fleet size for the Cybertruck, it requires a vast amount of data per user.
“Major Improvements”
While Elon didn’t mention what constitutes these major improvements, we have a lot of expectations besides what we know about the Cybertruck. Learning from the recent and successful FSD launch in China, Tesla is now able to utilize a more generalized model without specific local training data. This could potentially translate into better performance in North America as well, as the 7.7 million miles globally driven on FSD every day are feeding back into Tesla’s data loop.
We’re hopeful that future improvements continue to focus on improving tracking and decision-making, as well as lane handling. FSD users on X continue to point out issues with lane selection and lane keeping in the latest versions of FSD. On the flipside, Tesla has greatly increased the comfort and smoothness of FSD - and V13 is a prime example of that.
While V13.2.8 is also capable of pulling into parking stalls both forwards and in reverse (thanks to one of those flag changes recently), it does an oddly poor job of parking. Tesla’s Vision Autopark, on the other hand, is exceptionally accurate, even with big vehicles like the Cybertruck. It feels like Tesla is working on the parking lot stack to prepare for the upcoming launch of Robotaxi in June.
What About FSD V14
Back in the Q4 2024 Earnings Call, we heard about FSD V14, and just learned a little bit of what will make it unique. In this case, it's auto-regressive transformers that will improve FSD’s already powerful perception system and help it to predict better how other vehicles and road users will behave around it.
That, alongside a larger model and increased context size, will help FSD manage edge cases and make better decisions. The larger model and context size increases are likely another challenge for Tesla, which is already pushing the hardware limits of AI4 with FSD V13.
We did a deep dive into what we know about V14, which you can read here.
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