Tesla has released a new video showcasing its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta capability driving around the streets of Austin, Texas.
Back in August CEO Elon Musk shared a livestream of an unreleased version of FSD, version 12, in which his Model S drove him around the streets of the Bay Area in California. What made that demo special was that FSD V12 used “end-to-end AI.” Currently FSD Beta relies on a form of partial AI that utilizes neural networks to understand its surroundings. The non-AI aspect relates to how it interprets this data to make decisions regarding the vehicle’s actions, such as deceleration, acceleration, or navigating turns.
With V12 that car makes determinations solely based on visual input from its cameras (inputs) to decide its actions (outputs), as opposed to relying on hundreds of thousands of lines of code telling it what to do.
However the video that was shared on X, formerly Twitter, was not V12, but according to the fine print “the current driving capabilities of FSD Beta,” which is version 11.4.7 or later. Tesla highlighted their fleet learning approach and that FSD Beta uses “vision neural networks to perceive & understand the world, just like humans do.”
Interestingly Tesla also noted in the fine print that they had disabled the steering wheel nags for the video. If you have been behind the wheel with FSD Beta enabled you know that the driver is prompted to keep their hands on the steering wheel to ensure they are paying attention, but in this video no such prompts appear even though the driver never touches the wheel. This setting has previously been referred to as “Elon Mode” by hacker @greentheonly, who discovered the nag-free mode earlier this year.
The video itself is a little over 5 minutes long, but the drive is actually longer than that as certain sections are sped up. The drive starts off with the Model S navigating through some quiet residential streets before taking on some heavier traffic on main roads, including some complicated lane changes and highway merging.
You can watch the full video below.
Tesla Full Self-Driving capability demo in Austin
FSD capability features use vision neural networks to perceive & understand the world, just like humans do.
Via our unique fleet learning approach, we are able to collect anonymized data from our vehicles—meaning the neural… pic.twitter.com/CWAS5h0jGH
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 17, 2023
