CEO Elon Musk has been tweeting about Tesla’s sought-after Full Self-Driving Capability beta version 11 for what seems like forever. It appears people who own Tesla EVs and follow the whole FSD beta situation have been expecting version 11 forever now, and many seemed almost certain it was coming by the end of 2022, but it has been delayed multiple times since.
Musk has made it clear time and time again that “solving” self-driving has proven much more difficult than he and his team at Tesla expected. Meanwhile, it seems many others on the outside have expected that it would be very difficult, if not almost impossible. That said, Musk has proven the impossible to be possible on many occasions in his career so far, and he aims to continue doing so. However, it’s rare for his teams of employees at his various companies to meet the outspoken CEO’s super-optimistic timelines.
It was years ago now when Musk said Tesla would demonstrate its Full Self-Driving Capability by sending a car from coast to coast in the US with no driver intervention. The end of the year came and went multiple times since then, and there has been no such demonstration. Instead, Musk decided the only way to truly “solve” self-driving was to switch to a camera-based vision-only system that also relies on AI, and the system would be tested by Tesla owners on public roads in real-world driving.
With all of that said, it does seem as though Tesla is making notable progress on its Full Self-Driving goals. Interestingly, the company recently argued in court that it hasn’t yet realized the technology’s lofty goals, but it shouldn’t be punished for being forward-thinking and optimistic. Hopefully, someday, Tesla will solve FSD, and it seems a major milestone in that progress is graduating to the upcoming version 11.
The upcoming version is supposed to allow a Tesla vehicle to drive itself completely from one destination to another, whether the roads are city or highway, though a driver will still need to be in the driver’s seat ready to take over if needed. More specifically, version 11 is supposed to bring together FSD, which handles city streets and smaller roads, with Autopilot, which is for the highway, merging the two into what’s referred to as a “single stack.”
Some 400,000 Tesla owners in North America are currently subscribed to FSD beta, but it seems not all of them have been getting the most recent updates, so even if version 11 had come out in November 2022 when it was first expected, only a small group of beta testers would have likely had access to it.
Tesla is currently testing FSD beta v11 internally, and it’s supposed to go to employees next, followed by beta testers. However, every time it seems it’s going to be released, Musk takes to Twitter to announce that it’s delayed. Below are just a handful of the CEO’s tweets about the software update, in chronological order. Be sure to check out the dates:
There are many more tweets, but hopefully, you get the idea. As you can see, it now looks like v11.3 will roll out this week, but only as a limited beta. Keep in mind, as noted above by Musk, this will all have to eventually be adapted for global use.
As always, we love to read your comments. Let us know what you think of Musk’s timelines related to FSD. Will it ever be a “full self-driving” system? When do you think version 11 will roll out to all the folks who paid for the package?