Elon Musk said he tested an unreleased version of the Tesla Full Self-Driving suite yesterday, known as the v12 Alpha build, and referred to its performance as “mind-blowing.”
After the newest version of the Full Self-Driving Beta, labeled v11.4.6, started rolling out to non-employees yesterday, Musk noted that he tested an unreleased version 12 Alpha build and had high complements for its performance.
I tested the version 12 alpha build today. It is mind-blowing.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 27, 2023
About a month ago, Musk was already hyping up the performance of the Full Self-Driving suite’s 12th version. Although it is not ready for public release quite yet, he did state that it could make its way to customers later this year, but it needs more refinements as Tesla has been cautious in its release of new versions of the FSD program.
But the real meat here is the fact that Musk said during those comments that v12 would be the first FSD version to shed the “beta” label, meaning it would be a major vote of confidence by Tesla that the suite could simply be referred to as “Full Self-Driving.”
Tesla FSD to lose “beta” designation with V12 update: Elon Musk
Where things get challenging with this, however, is that it does not mean the suite will be capable of fully-autonomous driving, but rather it would only be an improvement from past iterations of the FSD suite and not necessarily a commitment that the company had “solved” FSD, as Musk has said for many years.
Instead, it would hint toward a drastic change that has been the culmination of hundreds of millions of miles of driving data and the rollout of the Dojo supercomputer, which is expected to accelerate the improvements of the FSD suite.
Nevertheless, the v12 build of the Full Self-Driving suite will obviously be the most accurate and robust to date but don’t expect to see it for at least a few months.
Although Musk has stated it could be out by the end of the year, the CEO usually has aggressive timetables for the release of features, so 2024 might be a safer estimate of when it could be released.
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