Elon Musk just shared where version 12.6 of Tesla's FSD software is likely to go - and that is one intervention per year. I expect to see this version this year. 12.4.1 is releasing today to Tesla employees, and to customers starting this weekend.
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Elon Musk Shares Future FSD Details
I've been using Tesla's FSD version 12.3.3 to 12.3.6 for the last couple of months now and most of the time, it drives very well. According to Elon Musk, a future version of FSD, which I think means 12.6, will have only one intervention per year.
The wording here is VERY interesting. An intervention, as what Elon described here, is doing something like hitting the accelerator pedal to encourage the car to move forward. This is different from a disengagement, which shuts off FSD completely and has the driver taking over all driving.
I am going to say that Elon Musk means an intervention here and if that is true, is it also true that a disengagement, where the driver has to take over, will only happen once per year - or will it be even less?
I think it's going to come down to the data of usage of FSD. Right now, I disengage, but it usually isn't for safety critical reasons. It's for semantics, such as the car not getting in the far left lane soon enough to avoid having to cut cars off to get in that lane down the road to make a turn half a mile away.
The semantics of driving haven't been talked about much, but the only way to know if there is an improvement there is to stay subscribed to FSD and to keep using it in my daily life and in new places. I'll be able to see for myself if it improves in its route planning.
Semantics aside, even if the car does drive in a way that you wouldn't, it's still doing it safely the majority of the time, requiring no intervention. I haven't had an intervention or a safety disengagement in a while now - a few weeks. The last time was when the car was driving on some sketchy roads in Provo, Utah, and it likely hadn't been trained well on them.
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Future Versions of FSD
With Tesla released FSD version 12.4.1 to employees only and then this weekend, most likely, to customers, I would expect to get version 12.4 in the next couple of weeks. This is later than I thought it would release, which means that Tesla likely found more bugs than they bargained for. Such is the nature of any software development and evolution.
Just how are bugs fixed in versions of FSD now, if the software is using nothing but neural nets to drive and all the manual code was removed?
Chances are, it's either in the videos that the system is being trained on, the machine learning software itself needs to be adjusted, with things like model weights changing, and there are probably other proprietary things Tesla is doing in its software that it continues to adjust.
I expect version 12.6 to release this year, then what happens? Will there be a version 13 next year? Will it be one intervention every 2 years, then 5 years, then 10 years, then 100 years? And how long will that take?
What is the threshold for a robotaxi to operate without a driver? I think the intervention rate has to be such that it is on par with how often accidents occur with a human driver. Date seems to suggest, from searching on Google on multiple websites, around 182,000 miles driven per crash and accident.
If Tesla's FSD can show with data that no interventions are required beyond the normal crash rate, I think it's a no-brainer to have driverless cars. I think the cars will be much safer than a human before that because this is comparing an intervention to a crash, which isn't the same thing.
As far as I know, there hasn't been a recorded crash with FSD that I've seen. It doesn't mean it hasn't happened - just that I haven't seen one reported.
I expect in the coming years, we'll see exponential progress in miles per intervention. I think we will get as high as 1 million miles per intervention and even higher.
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Will Tesla's FSD software get to one intervention per year or less, this year, with version 12.6?
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Hi! I'm Jeremy Noel Johnson, and I am a Tesla investor and supporter and own a 2022 Model 3 RWD EV and I don't have range anxiety :). I enjoy bringing you breaking Tesla news as well as anything about Tesla or other EV companies I can find, like Aptera. Other interests of mine are AI, Tesla Energy and the Tesla Bot! You can follow me on X.COM or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow my Tesla and EV news coverage.
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Article Reference: Tesla
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