Tesla frequently updates the software on their vehicles, each time including a list of changes and additions in the accompanying release notes. For whatever reason there are often other changes, sometimes significant ones, that aren’t included in the release notes. That is the case with the latest update to Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta 11.4.2 (2023.7.10), which started being released to testers late last week.
The changes were uncovered by none other than hacker @greentheonly, who frequently discovered interesting tidbits by scouring the source code of the updates. According to green one of the biggest changes behind the scenes that wasn’t mentioned in the release notes has to do with the automatic wipers.
If you have owned a Tesla you are probably aware that the automatic wipers are certainly not the best in the industry, and can sometimes activate on a perfectly clear and sunny day. The main reason for this is that Tesla doesn’t use a traditional rain sensor like other automakers, but instead relies on the vehicle’s cameras to detect precipitation. The automaker has attempted to improve the automatic wipers over the years, releasing an update back in 2019 that included a ‘Deep Rain’ neural net in which any manual intervention to the wipers when in automatic mode would be captured and used to train and improve the performance in future software updates.
It looks like Tesla may be backing away from ‘Deep Rain’ as FSD Beta testers can now deactivate the feature if they want to, according to green.
UPDATE 8:20am PT: Elon Musk has promised improvements to the automatic wiper behaviour, saying it is the last neural net to be updated.
Sorry, this is one of the last neural nets to be updated to surround video (from single camera, single frame)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2023
One of the other notable changes in 11.4.2 includes a change to Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), which now also works for when someone cuts in front of you in traffic. Previously this would only work for stationary objects in front of you.
So despite 11.4.2 release notes not changing from .1, the differences underneath are substantial
There’s now autowiper v4 with ability to disable “deep rain” (I guess that did not pan out all that well)
There’s AEB for cut-in traffic (server side toggle)
And a bunch of more stuff— green (@greentheonly) May 27, 2023
