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Tesla is upgrading airbag safety through a crazy software update

“This upgrade builds upon your vehicle’s superior crash protection by now using Tesla Vision to help offer some of the most cutting-edge airbag performance in the event of a frontal crash.”

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla is upgrading airbag safety through a crazy software update, which will utilize the company’s vision-first approach to enable better protection in the event of an accident.

Over the years, Tesla has gained an incredible reputation for prioritizing safety in its vehicles, with crash test ratings at the forefront of its engineers’ minds.

This has led to Tesla gaining numerous five-star safety ratings and awards related to safety. It is not just a statistical thing, either. In the real world, we’ve seen Teslas demonstrate some impressive examples of crash safety.

Everything from that glass roof not caving in when a tree falls on it to a Model Y surviving a drive off a cliff has been recorded.

However, Tesla is always looking to improve safety, and unlike most companies, it does not need a physical hardware update to do so. It can enhance features such as crash response and airbag performance through Over-the-Air software updates, which download automatically to the vehicle.

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In Tesla’s 2025.32 Software Update, the company is rolling out a Frontal Airbag System Enhancement, which aims to use Tesla Vision, the company’s camera-based approach to self-driving, to keep occupants safe.

The release notes state (via NotaTeslaApp):

“This upgrade builds upon your vehicle’s superior crash protection by now using Tesla Vision to help offer some of the most cutting-edge airbag performance in the event of a frontal crash. Building on top of regulatory and industry crash testing, this release enables front airbags to begin to inflate and restrain occupants earlier, in a way that only Tesla’s integrated systems are capable of doing, making your car safer over time.”

The use of cameras to predict a better time to restrain occupants with seatbelts and inflate airbags prior to a collision is a fantastic way to prevent injuries and limit harm done to those in the vehicle.

The feature is currently limited to the Model Y.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk teases ‘Banish’ feature to pair perfectly with Summon

Tesla has long promised the possibility of completely hands-off parking: arrive, drop off at the entrance, the car parks itself, and the car retrieves you at the end of your visit.

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Credit: Tesla China

Elon Musk has once again teased the “Banish” feature that could come to Tesla vehicles in the near future. It would be a perfect pairing to the popular Assisted Smart Summon (ASS), which the company launched earlier this year.

Banish has been something Tesla has teased for years. The company has promised the possibility of completely hands-off parking: arrive, drop off at the entrance, the car parks itself, and the car retrieves you at the end of your visit.

Ultimately, even though it is technically a driverless feature, Tesla has not refined its parking portion of the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite enough to release Banish to the public.

Tesla recently started performing specified parking tasks at the driver’s discretion. In the FSD (Supervised) v14.1 release, Tesla has added the ability to pick your parking scenario. Drivers can choose a Charger, Parking Lot, Curbside, Street, Driveway, or Parking Garage.

To achieve Banish, Tesla would have to gather enough data with these scenarios to then gain the capability to park after dropping vehicle occupants off.

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However, CEO Elon Musk recently hyped Banish to the point of stating Teslas will be capable of it “in the near future.”

His remark came in response to a video where FSD v14.1 drove around a Costco parking lot for twenty minutes looking for a spot:

Summon is a feature that has given Tesla its challenges, but the release of Assisted Smart Summon (ASS) has improved some of its capabilities.

I tested it after receiving v14.1, and it did a great job of taking the correct route and driving safely to my location:

There will likely be some time between now and when Tesla is able to release Banish. As previously noted, Tesla will need to collect enough data from real-world scenarios and obtain a proven track record of being able to handle lots and parking in a variety of environments while supervised.

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Tesla faces new blockade in Sweden as IF Metall escalates dispute

The action takes effect October 15 and will remain in place until Tesla signs a collective agreement.

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Credit: NicklasNilsso14/X

Just over a month after the Swedish Meditation Institute threw in the towel on Tesla and IF Metall’s conflict, the labor union has announced a new industrial action aimed at disrupting the electric vehicle maker’s operations in the country. 

Potential Tesla disruptions

The latest news involves a total work stoppage by Linde Material Handling, one of Sweden’s largest forklift companies, which services industrial clients nationwide. The action takes effect October 15 and will remain in place until Tesla signs a collective agreement, as noted in a Dagens Arbete (DA) report.

The stoppage will halt all forklift-related work Linde performs for Tesla’s local subsidiary, TM Sweden, including maintenance, repair, and service of trucks used across its facilities. Simon Petersson, IF Metall’s contract secretary, shared described the union’s latest effort in a comment to the publication.

“We know that Tesla has trucks in several locations and that they are in need of service, maintenance and repair. We are stopping that now. For Linde, this is not a big deal. They service trucks for a lot of companies and Tesla is a small player in their portfolio,” Petersson noted.

Not a sure strategy

Whether IF Metall’s latest effort will succeed against Tesla remains to be seen, especially since the electric vehicle maker has been pretty firm in its stance that its employees do not need a collective agreement. Still, the IF Metall contract secretary stated that Linde’s strike against Tesla should make it more difficult for the electric vehicle maker to operate its business in Sweden. 

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“It remains to be seen. But as I have said before, it is about many small streams. This stops everything Linde does for Tesla. So not only with them, but regardless of where the work takes place. So if Tesla has problems with a truck, they will not have it repaired or serviced,” Petersson stated.

Following the decision of the Swedish Meditation Institute to end the negotiations between IF Metall and Tesla early last month, the union noted that it would still try to pressure the EV maker to sign a collective agreement. Since then, the Electricians union, as well as the postmen’s unions Seko and ST have continued to initiate blockades against Tesla Sweden.

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SpaceX is preparing to launch Starship V2 one final time

The mission will test reentry dynamics, new landing burn configurations, and heat-shield upgrades.

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Credit: SpaceX/X

SpaceX is preparing to launch its final Starship V2 rocket on October 13, 2025. The launch closes the curtain on Starship V2 and marks the start of the ambitious spacecraft’s V3 era. 

Liftoff for Flight 11 is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. ET from Starbase in South Texas, with a 75-minute launch window. The mission will test reentry dynamics, new landing burn configurations, and heat-shield upgrades ahead of the transition to the next-generation Starship V3.

Starship V3 and beyond

Elon Musk confirmed on X that Starship V3 is already in production and could be “built & tested” and perhaps even flown before the end of 2025. The new version is expected to feature major performance and scale improvements, with Musk stating that Starship V3, provided that things go well, might be capable of reaching Mars, though V4 is more likely to perform a full-scale mission to the red planet. 

“Only one more V2 left to launch,” Musk wrote back in August following Starship’s successful Flight 10 mission. In another post, Musk stated that “Starship V3 is a massive upgrade from the current V2 and should be through production and testing by end of year, with heavy flight activity next year.”

Starship V2’s final mission

Flight 11 is designed to push the limits of Starship V2. SpaceX engineers have intentionally removed heat-shield tiles in vulnerable areas to analyze how the vehicle handles atmospheric reentry under stress, as noted in a Space.com report. The test will also refine subsonic guidance algorithms and new landing burn sequences for the Super Heavy booster that would be used for Starship V3.

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“Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase. Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns. 

“The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America,” SpaceX wrote in a post on its official website.

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