The top brass of Tesla (TSLA) is much more active on the company’s perspectives and updates than it used to be in the past.
Tesla lead engineer Lars Moravy and Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen talked to Tesla owners and fans at the Robotaxi unveiling event last week. They gave out some important information as well besides Elon Musk’s keynote presentation.
On the other side, Tesla AI head honcho Ashok Elluswamy is active on his boss’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Ashok has been providing important FSD (Supervised) updates from time to time whenever he feels it’s necessary to give his valuable input.
FSD v13 to Ship Soon
Ashok revealed an interesting fact that the Robotaxi vehicles self-driving around the Warner Bros. Studios on the unveiling night were running on FSD v13. The following statistics of the Robotaxi used on dedicated new platform vehicles and Model 3 and Y at the event say a lot about the upcoming version of FSD Supervised.
Reflecting on the We, Robot event, we had:
- 19 Cybercabs and 29 Model Ys driving themselves
- 1,300 trips transporting over 2,000 guests
- Continuous operation of over the 3.5 hours
- And every trip was perfectly safe!
In the original FSD release roadmap, Tesla published last month, FSD v13 was scheduled to roll out in October. Looking at last month’s milestones and Cybertruck FSD delivery, expecting FSD v13 this month is not overly optimistic.
Tesla AI software development head Ashok Elluswamy confirmed that FSD v13 is going to ship soon. He wrote the following in an X post:
The best part was that almost all of the autonomy demonstrated was using close to the production AI software or will ship soon in v13.
Robotaxi Capability of HW3 Tesla Cars
During Elon Musk’s Robotaxi keynote, someone from the live audience asked “What about Hardware 3 (HW3)?” — meaning can older Tesla vehicles with HW3 Autopilot hardware become Robotaxis?
“Let’s not get nuanced here,” Musk replied and moved on to the next line of his keynote. This was certainly not a clear answer and gave way to skepticism.
However, in a short video released by Tesla influencer Kim Java on Monday gave a little hope to Tesla HW3 vehicle owners. She was interviewing Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy (Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla).
Kim asked both of them if her 2018 Model 3 with Hardware 3 going to be able to use the same Unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) software as the Robotaxi. To which Lars replied, “Good to go”.
However, some Tesla fans believe that by the time Robotaxi Unsupervised FSD is out, Hardware 3 cars will have become outdated. I too agree with this notion. Lars and Franz are not directly related to Tesla’s software development and AI departments, so they were the wrong people to ask this question.
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- Tesla starts Robotaxi service in the SF Bay Area, but it’s different from Austin
- Tesla FSD to get Robotaxi improvements in general release, Robotaxi California launch is pending regulatory approval, Musk
- Tesla expands Robotaxi service area in Austin, the new map looks like the Tesla logo upside down, says the automaker
- Tesla is mapping Austin, Texas for Robotaxi service and Cybertruck FSD
- Tesla Robotaxi mode has a special wiper routine focused on FSD camera cleaning (video)
