Tesla appears to have started slowly rolling out v11 of the Full Self-Driving Beta program this morning, just a few days after CEO Elon Musk stated the company would begin releasing it to more vehicles.
Tesla’s FSD Beta v11.3.1 started to roll out to employees late last year and a select few of the automaker’s long-standing testers a few weeks ago.
The controlled rollout allows Tesla to monitor its behaviors and tendencies in a highly safe way, as it can determine issues or bugs in a small sample size and fix them before a wider release begins.
On March 14, Musk stated that “ V11 starts going wide this weekend,” and we’ve heard it before. However, it appears the automaker is happy with the early reviews and is starting to release it to more vehicles.
V11 starts going wide this weekend
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 15, 2023
v11.3.2 is the newest version of the Beta and is being rolled out with Tesla Software Update 2022.45.11. According to statistics from TeslaScope, more vehicles are being updated with the new FSD Beta v11, and more drivers on the r/TeslaMotors subreddit are beginning to report that they have received the update.
Drivers who have experienced the early editions of this rollout have reported that there have been several improvements to highway driving, and inner-city street navigation has also been refined and feels more accurate than ever before, which is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
The full release notes for the FSD Beta are available below via TeslaScope:
- Enabled FSD Beta on highway. This unifies the vision and planning stack on and off-highway and replaces the legacy highway stack, which is over four years old. The legacy highway stack still relies on several single-camera and single-frame networks, and was setup to handle simple lane-specific maneuvers. FSD Beta’s multi-camera video networks and next-gen planner, that allows for more complex agent interactions with less reliance on lanes, make way for adding more intelligent behaviors, smoother control and better decision making.
- Improved recall for close-by cut-in cases by 15%, particularly for large trucks and high-yaw rate scenarios, through an additional 30k auto-labeled clips mined from the fleet. Additionally, expanded and tuned dedicated speed control for cut-in objects.
- Improved the position of ego in wide lanes, by biasing in the direction of the upcoming turn to allow other cars to maneuver around ego.
- Improved handling during scenarios with high curvature or large trucks by offsetting in lane to maintain safe distances to other vehicles on the road and increase comfort.
- Improved behavior for path blockage lane changes in dense traffic. Ego will now maintain more headway in blocked lanes to hedge for possible gaps in dense traffic.
- Improved lane changes in dense traffic scenarios by allowing higher acceleration during the alignment phase. This results in more natural gap selection to overtake adjacent lane vehicles very close to ego.
- Made turns smoother by improving the detection consistency between lanes, lines and road edge predictions. This was accomplished by integrating the latest version of the lane-guidance module into the road edge and lines network.
- Improved accuracy for detecting other vehicles’ moving semantics. Improved precision by 23% for cases where other vehicles transition to driving and reduced error by 12% for cases where Autopilot incorrectly detects its lead vehicle as parked. These were achieved by increasing video context in the network, adding more data of these scenarios, and increasing the loss penalty for control- relevant vehicles.
- Extended maximum trajectory optimization horizon, resulting in smoother control for high curvature roads and far away vehicles when driving at highway speeds.
- Improved driving behavior next to row of parked cars in narrow lanes, preferring to offset and staying within lane instead of unnecessarily lane changing away or slowing down.
- Improved back-to-back lane change maneuvers through better fusion between vision-based localization and coarse map lane counts.
- Added text blurbs in the user interface to communicate upcoming maneuvers that FSD Beta plans to make. Also improved the visualization of upcoming slowdowns along the vehicle’s path. Chevrons render at varying opacity and speed to indicate the slowdown intensity, and a solid line appears at locations where the car will come to a stop.
- Improved the recall and precision of object detection, notably reducing the position error of semi-trucks by 10%, increasing the recall and precision of crossing vehicles over 100m away by 3% and 7%, respectively, and increasing the recall of motorbikes by 5%. This was accomplished by implementing additional quality checks in our two million video clip autolabeled dataset.
- Reduced false offsetting around objects in wide lanes and near intersections by improving object kinematics modeling in low speed scenarios.
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Elon Musk
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
The real story behind the tunneling startup’s Nashville tunnel project is the company’s targeted $25 million per mile construction cost.
Recent commentary on social media has highlighted what could very well prove to be The Boring Company’s real disruption.
The analysis was shared by tech watcher Aakash Gupta on social media platform X, where he argued that the real story behind the tunneling startup’s Nashville tunnel project is the company’s targeted $25 million per mile construction cost.
According to Gupta’s breakdown, Nashville’s 2018 light rail proposal was priced at roughly $200 million per mile. New York’s East Side Access project reportedly cost about $3.5 billion per mile, while Los Angeles Metro expansion projects have approached $1 billion per mile.
By comparison, The Boring Company has stated it can construct 13 miles of twin tunnels in the Music City Loop for between $240 million and $300 million total. That implies a cost near $25 million per mile, or roughly a 95% reduction from industry averages cited in the post.
Several technical departures from conventional tunneling allow the Boring Company to lower its costs, from its smaller 12-foot diameter tunnels to its fully electric Prufrock machines that are designed to mine continuously with no personnel inside the tunnel and their capability to “porpoise” for easy launch and retrieval.
Tesla and Space CEO Elon Musk responded to the post on X, stating simply that “Tunnels are so underrated.”
The Boring Company has seen some momentum as of late, with the company recently signing a construction contract in Dubai and the Universal Orlando Loop progressing. Recent reports have also pointed to tunnels potentially being constructed to solve traffic congestion issues near the Giga Nevada area.
While The Boring Company’s tunnels have so far been used for Loop systems publicly for now, Elon Musk recently noted that the tunneling startup’s underground passages would not be limited only to ride-hailing vehicles.
In a reply to a post on X which discussed the specifications of the Music City Loop, Musk clarified that “any fully autonomous electric cars can use the tunnels.” This suggests that vehicles potentially running systems like FSD Supervised, even if they are not Teslas, could be used in systems like the Music City Loop in the future.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
News
Tesla expands global FSD (Supervised) testing with Abu Dhabi trials
The program marks the emirate’s first formal testing framework for Tesla’s supervised autonomous driving technology.
Tesla has started its first Full Self-Driving (Supervised) road trials in Abu Dhabi under the oversight of the Integrated Transport Centre, also known as Abu Dhabi Mobility.
The program marks the emirate’s first formal testing framework for Tesla’s supervised autonomous driving technology.
FSD (Supervised) road trials are being conducted with the support of the Smart and Autonomous Systems Council and in coordination with the Legislation Lab at the General Secretariat of the UAE Cabinet.
Dr. Abdulla Hamad AlGhfeli, Acting Director General of the Integrated Transport Centre (Abu Dhabi Mobility), highlighted the agency’s regulatory role in overseeing the FSD (Supervised) tests in a press release.
“The supervision of the Integrated Transport Centre (Abu Dhabi Mobility) over the commencement of Tesla’s advanced autonomous driving technology tests reflects its regulatory and legislative role. These tests represent a qualitative step to evaluate the technology’s performance in a real-world operating environment and to collect the necessary data to verify its readiness before any future expansion in usage.
“Through this organized framework, and in cooperation with strategic partners, we seek to achieve a balance between supporting innovation and encouraging the adoption of smart solutions on one hand and ensuring the safety of road users on the other, in line with the emirate’s direction to develop an advanced, safe, and sustainable transport system,” he said.
Tesla is putting a lot of effort into expanding the rollout of FSD (Supervised) to territories outside in the United States. During a recent interview with Giga Berlin plant manager Andre Thierig, Musk stated that Tesla is looking to secure approval for FSD (Supervised) in the Netherlands this coming March.
“Tesla has the most advanced real-world AI, and hopefully, it will be approved soon in Europe. We’re told by the authorities that March 20th, it’ll be approved in the Netherlands,’ what I was told. Hopefully, that date remains the same. But I think people in Europe are going to be pretty blown away by how good the Tesla car AI is in being able to drive,” Musk stated.