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Tesla Autopilot’s 4D upgrade could lead to more FSD features
Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that the company’s Autopilot systems are being upgraded to 4D, which will improve the performance and capabilities of the semi-autonomous driving function. Currently, Autopilot is operating with “~2.5D,” Musk said.
The developments came from a question that was asked by a Twitter follower of Musk’s who has issues using Tesla’s Summon feature on his driveway. Summon allows owners to retrieve their vehicles by using their Smartphones. By holding the “COME TO ME” button within the Tesla app, the car will use GPS vectoring to travel to the location of the phone.
Summon is a part of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite. But, the rework of Autopilot’s dimensional upgrade is apart of something much bigger. Perhaps it deals with a complete rewrite of Autopilot that will extend the company’s FSD features.
We need to finish upgrading Autopilot to 4D vs ~2.5D, then it will go up very steep slopes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2020
However, the owner stated that the grade of his driveway is slightly steeper than 10%, which inhibits the vehicle from traveling up roads that have inclines. The steepness of the slope, along with normal transitions from a street to a driveway, can present issues for Tesla’s Autopilot. This could be due to the lack of information that Tesla’s Neural Network has for navigating these environments.
With that being said, Tesla is developing a 4-dimensional system for Autopilot. The development of new elements for Autopilot to comprehend the surroundings and road environment of the vehicle could lead to more drastic improvements and an increasingly accurate comprehension of the roads a vehicle travels on.
Tesla’s currently Autopilot suite uses ~2.5D, Musk said. Now, it uses two-dimensional images along with labels, which could account for the around 2.5 dimensions that Musk spoke of in the tweet.
Adding dimensions to the Autopilot system will simply increase the accuracy of how the car reacts in certain situations. Currently, Tesla uses images from Autopilot cameras that are labeled with information. Tesla could use 3-dimensional stereoscopic scenes that are reconstructed from video, along with timestamps to improve accuracy.
A few members of the Tesla community put their two cents in on what the 4-dimensional Autopilot system could entail.
Reddit user u/__TSLA__ stated that curating a massive series of traffic scenarios and objects that a car might encounter during a drive could improve the accuracy of Autopilot and Tesla’s self-driving capabilities.
However, another Reddit user, u/Semmel_Baecker, said that 4D could mean that the Autopilot cameras could build a real-time 3D environment and then predict the movements of labeled objects in 4D based on past behaviors of other vehicles. This strategy would effectively use the Neural Network to learn the reactions of other drivers or objects.
Tesla continues to develop Autopilot behaviors to eventually release a “feature complete” Full Self-Driving suite in the future. The electric automaker continues to release patents that aim to build a more accurate Autopilot system that will accelerate the company’s journey toward Level 5 Autonomy, which Musk says is coming soon.
Most recently, Tesla submitted a patent titled, “Enhanced Object Detection for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Field View,” that would crop important objects in images and increase the resolution of those images. If pedestrians, vehicles, or other objects are available in an image, they would be available at an increased resolution to improve the accuracy of Autopilot.
Tesla’s exact plans for an Autopilot upgrade to 4-dimensional imagery is unknown. The increased accuracy is necessary for the company’s cars to drive in any environment. Tesla will soon release FSD’s “Driving on City Streets” function, which will complete the suite.
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Starlink goes mainstream with first-ever SpaceX Super Bowl advertisement
SpaceX used the Super Bowl broadcast to promote Starlink, pitching the service as fast, affordable broadband available across much of the world.
SpaceX aired its first-ever Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, marking a rare move into mass-market advertising as it seeks to broaden adoption of its Starlink satellite internet service.
Starlink Super Bowl advertisement
SpaceX used the Super Bowl broadcast to promote Starlink, pitching the service as fast, affordable broadband available across much of the world.
The advertisement highlighted Starlink’s global coverage and emphasized simplified customer onboarding, stating that users can sign up for service in minutes through the company’s website or by phone in the United States.
The campaign comes as SpaceX accelerates Starlink’s commercial expansion. The satellite internet service grew its global user base in 2025 to over 9 million subscribers and entered several dozen additional markets, as per company statements.
Starlink growth and momentum
Starlink has seen notable success in numerous regions across the globe. Brazil, in particular, has become one of Starlink’s largest growth regions, recently surpassing one million users, as per Ookla data. The company has also expanded beyond residential broadband into aviation connectivity and its emerging direct-to-cellular service.
Starlink has recently offered aggressive promotions in select regions, including discounted or free hardware, waived installation fees, and reduced monthly pricing. Some regions even include free Starlink Mini for select subscribers. In parallel, SpaceX has introduced AI-driven tools to streamline customer sign-ups and service selection.
The Super Bowl appearance hints at a notable shift for Starlink, which previously relied largely on organic growth and enterprise contracts. The ad suggests SpaceX is positioning Starlink as a mainstream alternative to traditional broadband providers.
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Starlink goes mainstream with first-ever SpaceX Super Bowl advertisement
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
