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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.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla’s long-standing saga regarding its door handles and a manual release has entered its latest chapter, and as a result, a big change is coming.
On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) denied Tesla’s petition that was seeking a defect investigation into roughly 180,000 Model 3 vehicles for an issue involving the emergency mechanical door release.
🚨 The NHTSA denied a petition from Tesla that would have thrown out concerns regarding its door handles.
NHTSA said Tesla’s petition did not present evidence of a safety-related defect warranting an investigation. The agency said a rulemaking process would be a better strategy. pic.twitter.com/j6PzUBM1mT
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 24, 2026
NHTSA said that Tesla’s petition did not present evidence of a safety-related defect in the door handles or their emergency releases. Instead, the agency determined that it would rather solve the issue of the lack of labeling or location of emergency mechanical door releases and the federal safety rules that govern them.
Essentially, the NHTSA wants to create and enforce rules that would require automakers to make emergency door latch releases more clearly labeled in a car. Despite a Tesla having manual door releases on all four passenger doors, many people do not know they exist or how they work.
Tesla addresses door handle complaints with simple engineering fix
In recent times, Tesla has faced some criticism involving its door handles, specifically because some occupants have reported that they are unable to exit their vehicles after losing power. The door handles on a Tesla are electronically operated, but in the event that the 12V battery dies, there is a manual release that can be used.
The NHTSA only identified a single complaint involving the mechanical door releases: a 2022 Model 3 owner said the release was concealed and unlabeled after the vehicle lost power after a front-end collision. It has also already started to create a separate rulemaking process to make emergency door-egress systems more obvious.
It should be noted that all Teslas have mechanical emergency door releases, but they are placed in various locations as the vehicles have aged and been redesigned from year to year. Refer to the safety manual for your vehicle if you have any confusion about where the emergency releases are and how they work.
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SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
SpaceX pushed Starship Flight 13 to Friday, blaming weather instead of the previous engine issues.
SpaceX called off Thursday’s launch attempt of Starship Flight 13, pushing the mission to Friday because of weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha. The company confirmed the delay on X, noting “Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather. A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions.”
This is the second delay for Flight 13 in two weeks. SpaceX first tried to launch the mission on July 16, but the countdown ended in an automated abort at T-0 when four of Super Heavy Booster 20’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Musk said at the time that two Raptors would need to be removed and replaced, as Teslarati reported. The company spent the following week destacking Ship 40 and Booster 20, swapping engines, and running leak checks before restacking the vehicle on Pad 2 Wednesday night, according to Spaceflight Now’s live coverage.
Unlike the engine problem, Thursday’s delay has nothing to do with the hardware. SpaceX wants clean footage of Starship’s heat shield captured from the ground as the vehicle flies through max dynamic pressure, something the storm’s cloud cover over South Texas would not allow. The company said visibility should improve for Friday’s attempt, with the same 90 minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CT.
Flight 13 will be the second outing for the V3 versions of Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. The mission carries 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, the first time SpaceX has flown operational satellites rather than mass simulators on Starship. Six of those satellites are fitted with cameras to inspect the heat shield from a different angle during ascent, giving engineers a second data source beyond the ground imagery the weather is currently blocking.
Booster 20 will attempt a boostback burn and a splashdown landing burn in the Gulf of America, while Ship 40 follows a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. The flight plan largely mirrors Flight 12, though the booster will run a more aggressive ascent burn after max Q this time, and the ship’s heat shield includes load sensing tiles meant to measure stress at the higher dynamic pressure SpaceX is targeting.
If Friday’s attempt succeeds, Flight 13 could be the last suborbital test in the program. SpaceX is already looking to push for an orbital flight on Flight 14.
Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
