Tesla’s important Full Self-Driving Beta v11 software update is delayed again as the automaker appears to have serious issues shipping it.
Tesla FSD Beta v11 is both an exciting and scary step as it is supposed to merge Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot highway stacks.
FSD Beta enables Tesla vehicles to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.
Since the responsibility rests with the driver and not Tesla’s system, it is still considered a level-two driver-assist system, despite its name. It has been sort of a “two steps forward, one step back” type of program, as some updates have seen regressions in terms of the driving capabilities.
Tesla has frequently been releasing new software updates to the FSD Beta program and adding more owners to it.
Since the wider release of the beta last year, there are currently over 400,000 Tesla owners in the program in North America – virtually every Tesla owner who bought the FSD package on their vehicles.
However, the bulk of these owners have yet to receive significant FSD beta updates as Tesla was supposed to release v11 to the fleet in November 2022, but the update has been stuck in testing within Tesla’s closed fleet since then.
The update is an important step because it includes many new neural networks, as Musk stated, but from a consumer perspective, it’s also important because it is expected to merge Tesla’s FSD Beta software stack primarily used on roads and city streets with Tesla’s Autopilot software stack, which is used as a level 2 driver assist system on highways.
Most recently, CEO Elon Musk said that the v11 was coming last week, but last week came and past without the update.
Now Musk said that it is coming this week, but he said that it will be in a “limited beta”:
v11.3 (single stack) goes to limited beta this week. Probably 11.3.2 before wide release in North America. Then we adapt for EU roads & submit to regulators. 90% of what we’ve done so far for NA applies WW.
That generally means that the update will only be pushed to a select few early beta testers.
But that’s also what Musk is saying, and he has said several times that the update is coming within a week or so since late last year.
The CEO did admit that the v11 was “much harder than expected” and blamed the “re-architecture of neural nets” that the update brings to FSD Beta. Beyond that comment, it’s unclear what is holding up the update, but in the meantime, the 400,000 Tesla owners with FSD Beta haven’t seen meaningful improvements in a while.