Tesla (TSLA) started the rollout of its highly-anticipated Full Self-Driving version 13 (FSD v13) to non-employee Tesla car owners yesterday evening.
The tech automaker announced at the end of October that FSD v13 will be released around Thanksgiving. Later on, last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reaffirmed that FSD v13 was on its way and coming soon. However, the actual timeline was clouded from people outside the company but Tesla dropped the software on Saturday.
In the first round of its deployment, Tesla is sending FSD v13 to the early access group which includes select individual retail investors, social media influencers, and Tesla YouTubers (Chuck Cook, AI DRIVR, Dirty Tesla, etc.).
FSD v13 only for HW4 / AI4 Tesla Vehicles
The release of FSD v13 has some bad news for Tesla vehicles with the HW3 older computer. The release notes of the latest version suggest that FSD 13 and its sub-versions can only run on the new Hardware 4 (HW4/AI4) Tesla vehicles (produced since Jan 2024).
Tesla’s HW4 computer hardware produces 36 Hz high-resolution video clips to feed the Tesla neural network for Autopilot AI training. HW3 cars on the contrary send back video data with lower resolution and frequency.
Tesla’s new Cortex GPU cluster at Giga Texas takes this video training data from HW4 vehicles only. Because the Cortex compute power is capable of handling big amounts of data on high resolution, it’s currently only getting it from HW4/AI4 cars.
The scaled-up features and data sets of FSD v13 require the processing power of the faster HW4 computer. So, it’s currently going to be rolled out to HW4/AI4 vehicles only.
Tesla has promised to bring a free retrofit computer for HW3 vehicles if the company isn’t able to scale down FSD software without losing key functionality. But a retrofit seems a bit distant into the future at this point.
FSD v13.2 (2024.39.10) Goes Out to Non-Employees
Tesla decided to release FSD v13.2 (firmware version 2024.39.10) to non-employee early-access Tesla owners. Tesla had announced that it expected to release FSD v13.3 to be available for the public but ended up rolling out FSD v13.2.
The FSD v13.2 is most probably going to stay limited to early access group (OG) beta testers. After the automaker gathers decent amount of training and safety data and making needed improvements, FSD v13.3 will be available for wide release.
The FSD v13.2 Release Notes (below) also contain a list of improvements that will be deployed in the next point releases, so a wide public rollout shouldn’t be expected with the current version.
FSD v13 Official Release Notes (v13.2 / 2024.39.10)
FSD (Supervised) v13 upgrades every part of the end-to-end driving network.
Includes:
- 36 Hz, full-resolution AI4 video inputs
- Native AI4 inputs and neural network architectures
- 4.2x data scaling
- 5x training compute scaling (enabled by the Cortex cluster)
- Reduced photon-to-control latency by 2x
- Speed profiles on both City Streets and Highways
- Start FSD (Supervised) from Park with the touch of a button
- Integrated unpark, reverse, and park capabilities
- Improved reward predictions for collision avoidance
- Improved camera cleaning
- Redesigned controller for smoother, more accurate tracking
- Dynamic routing around road closures, which displays them along an affected route when they are detected by the fleet
Upcoming Improvements:
- 3x model size scaling
- 3x model context length scaling
- Audio inputs for better handling of emergency vehicles
- Improved reward predictions for navigation
- Improvements for false braking and slower driving in parking lots
- Support for destination options including pulling over, parking in a spot, driveway, or garage
- Efficient representation of maps and navigation inputs
- Improved handling of camera occlusions
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- Skeptics of FSD are the only ones who haven’t tried it, Elon Musk on Tesla Q4 2024 Earnings Call — key takeaways
 rolls out FSD v13 for non-employee early access Tesla owners. Get the FSD v13.2 (2024.39.10) official release notes and HW4 and HW3 compatibility information.){kind=link}