I bought my Tesla Model 3 RWD last summer and knew that software updates were a ‘thing’ with Tesla, but it wasn’t until the 2023 ‘Holiday Update’ (version 2023.44.30.2, soon to be updated to 2023.44.30.5.1) landed that I realized how significant these updates are relative to my driving experience. Most notable with that update were:
1) Custom Lock Sounds (replaces the horn sound with another sound of your choice – mine is the Windows 95 startup sound produced by Brian Eno)
2) Park Assist (Tesla Vision Park Assist displays a 3D representation of the world around your vehicle, including the proximity and shape of nearby objects, barriers, vehicles, and painted road markings), and
3) Automatic Blind Spot Camera (The blind spot camera view now alerts you with red shading along the edge when your turn signal is on and your vehicle detects an object or another vehicle in your blind spot)
Then in February 2024, the 2024.2.6 update was released with even more improvements. Here’s the short list for this update:
Then came April’s 2024.3.6 Release, accompanied by a 30-day free FSD (beta) trail for EVERY Tesla owner in the US (all 500,000 of us). Here’s this list of improvements provided in this update:
Besides the FSD (Beta) update which provided this feature to those interested in trying FSD out for 30 days, improved driving visualization and autopark are at the top of my list for cool features I’ll use every day. Mid-April saw an update to FSD (Supervised) v12, which “upgrades the city-streets driving stack to a single end-to-end neural network trained on millions of video clips, replacing over 300k lines of explicit C++ code.” As I’m writing this, FSD (Supervised) sits at v12.3.4, and last week Tesla reduced the monthly subscription cost for full-self driving from $199 per month to $99 per month. This is starting to make FSD look very interesting to the masses. Plus with an FSD subscription, you can cancel it when you’re not using it much, then start it up again for long road trips, etc. Or just subscribe! Compared to our cell phone and streaming service bills, this really isn’t a lot of money for the useful features FSD provides…
On the horizon is Tesla’s 2024.14 Release which includes these features (plus some others that we don’t yet know about):
There are a bunch of features here I’m excited about (visual updates, hands-free trunk, Spotify queue, better wiper controls, speed cameras, cabin overheat protection improvements, and improved trip progress, speedometer and regen indicators). Beach Buggy Racing? Not so much…
As a new Tesla owner, I didn’t think much about how important software updates would be to my ownership experience. But now that I have seen how significant these changes are to my safety and enjoyment of my Model 3, I believe this IS the way cars of the future should be. Many of us keep our cars for a long time, and if the car can continuously adapt to the driver(s) and to the world around us, then that’s the kind of car I want to own! And Tesla is doing that…
And on a side note, as I have now had the opportunity to drive with FSD (Supervised) for a while, what I said in the previous paragraph holds true. Two features of FSD that reinforce Tesla’s mission to make their cars the safest cars on the road include the following examples:
- You pull up to a 4-way stop sign at the same time a car to your right stops. Which car is supposed to go first? The rule in Pennsylvania is that the car on the right goes first. Most drivers in PA don’t know that, but the car does. The car will indicate that it’s waiting for the driver on the right to go first, because that’s what the law says it should do.
- There’s a cross-walk ahead. Many drivers, even if they see someone approaching the cross-walk will speed up because the person is not yet ready to cross. Not a Tesla in FSD mode. It will slow because it sees someone approaching the cross-walk, and will stop to allow them to cross, which again is what the law says it should do. This is the right behavior for a car using FSD, and SHOULD be the same behavior we all adopt to improve pedestrian safety!
But the on a slightly negative note, FSD is not yet very good at negotiating stop lights, in my experience. In PA, if you stop for a yellow light, you get rear-ended, because it’s common knowledge here that you speed up for yellow and stop for red. Also, in PA, if you enter the intersection on yellow, you can continue through after the light turns red. This is complicated for FSD and often gets it wrong. FSD is also know for running red lights. Bad FSD! But as we all know, the driver is ALWAYS responsible and is in control AT ALL TIMES. Right? So this is not such a big deal. Take control when you need to and everything will be just fine…