Photo: Tesla/edited by autoevolution
Elon Musk anticipated the wide release of Full Self-Driving (FSD). Previously expected to happen only with FSD 11, the Tesla CEO has announced on Twitter it will actually be the case with FSD 10.69.3.1. Instead of the current 100,000 testing the beta software in the U.S., that number will grow substantially.
According to Troy Teslike – considered a pretty reputable Tesla source – around 359,200 owners have bought FSD, with more than 264,700 of them in North America. The rest comes from Europe (over 88,700 customers) and the Asia-Pacific region (around 5,700 clients). That’s 2.6 times the number of people currently using the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) all of a sudden, which should get traffic safety organizations and advocates mad.
FSD and Autopilot are under several investigations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Ralph Nader urged NHTSA to remove FSD from current vehicles. Finally, Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), said FSD was “misleading and irresponsible.”
Ironically, FSD’s wide release may be hindered by hardware issues. When Tesla said all its cars had full self-driving hardware from October 19, 2016, on, that was not true. Elon Musk said on April 22, 2019, that the computer that would really allow that was HW 3.0, which theoretically equipped all Tesla vehicles from that point on. It was also not the case: thousands of Tesla vehicles still came with HW 2.5.
In China, Tesla was forced to replace them, but not in other markets, such as Canada. Musk repeated that the computers would be substituted for free when FSD was available to all customers who purchased it. Some had to pay $1,500 to get the proper hardware, which shows that the “for free” part was also not how Musk said it would be. Paying for it or not, the fact is that adequate hardware is mandatory for a wide release. And that need starts with the tweet below.
Tesla Service Centers are notoriously crowded and unable to fix all EVs. General Motors dealers are even benefitting from that by repairing Tesla vehicles themselves. Will the company have all the necessary hardware units to allow all FSD buyers to use the ADAS? What about the people who may want to give it a try with the subscription model? And these are not the only questions left unanswered.
The main one is FSD status. Is it still beta or already in stable release? Is “wide release” equivalent to a stable release? Elon Musk did not clarify any of that. Currently, allowing 100,000 Tesla customers to have FSD is considered by safety experts as an attempt to use them as moral crumple zones: if anything goes wrong, the users (literally) take the hit instead of the company.
FSD and Autopilot are under several investigations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Ralph Nader urged NHTSA to remove FSD from current vehicles. Finally, Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), said FSD was “misleading and irresponsible.”
Ironically, FSD’s wide release may be hindered by hardware issues. When Tesla said all its cars had full self-driving hardware from October 19, 2016, on, that was not true. Elon Musk said on April 22, 2019, that the computer that would really allow that was HW 3.0, which theoretically equipped all Tesla vehicles from that point on. It was also not the case: thousands of Tesla vehicles still came with HW 2.5.
In China, Tesla was forced to replace them, but not in other markets, such as Canada. Musk repeated that the computers would be substituted for free when FSD was available to all customers who purchased it. Some had to pay $1,500 to get the proper hardware, which shows that the “for free” part was also not how Musk said it would be. Paying for it or not, the fact is that adequate hardware is mandatory for a wide release. And that need starts with the tweet below.
Tesla Service Centers are notoriously crowded and unable to fix all EVs. General Motors dealers are even benefitting from that by repairing Tesla vehicles themselves. Will the company have all the necessary hardware units to allow all FSD buyers to use the ADAS? What about the people who may want to give it a try with the subscription model? And these are not the only questions left unanswered.
The main one is FSD status. Is it still beta or already in stable release? Is “wide release” equivalent to a stable release? Elon Musk did not clarify any of that. Currently, allowing 100,000 Tesla customers to have FSD is considered by safety experts as an attempt to use them as moral crumple zones: if anything goes wrong, the users (literally) take the hit instead of the company.
Tesla FSD 10.69.3.1 going to wide release now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022
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