It seems Tesla CEO Elon Musk has really had no idea exactly when the automaker will be ready to launch its promised Full Self-Driving Beta Version 9.0 software update. He's been teasing it for some time, but his timelines haven't worked out. However, now Musk has offered some much more specific details.
Tesla fans and owners have been waiting for the V9.0 update for months. Musk has said it will be on a completely different level than the current system. However, when Tesla decided to do away with radar and stick to only pure vision, it worked to push back the future software update significantly.
More recently, we've learned that Tesla is definitely going with the AI-based vision approach, as well as removing the radar. Musk has tweeted about this, and Tesla's website has now been updated to remove references to radar from its Autopilot and FSD pages, and the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles pages.
Musk's Twitter updates related to the topic have been happening for months, and it seems the timelines just continue to get pushed back further. The CEO's tweets related to releases are often just unclear, non-specific mentions to keep people talking, though the recent tweet is about as specific as we've seen from Musk.
Tweeted as a reply to Teslarati's story about the website updates, which we covered this week, Musk says pure vision Autopilot is already rolling out in North America. He also says another update to Autopilot will happen in two weeks, followed by FSD Beta V9.0 a week later, with the FSD subscription coming around the same time.
Will Musk's tweet come true, or is this just another meaningless update that will change many more times into the future? While it's difficult to know for sure, typically Musk isn't this specific unless he is confident. He could have easily just left the timing vague.
Added to all of this, Teslarati reported that an analysis of vehicle source code reveals that a price increase is coming for FSD. If true, the price may go from $10,000 to $14,000. The source code also suggests that Tesla will once again offer . The information related to the analysis of Tesla's source code was first shared on Reddit by u/Sudsington.
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We'd be speculating if we assumed that the price increase and the potential for a new vision-only Enhanced Autopilot were related to Musk's tweet about update timelines, but it seems to add up. We'd love to know what you think about all of this. Leave us your insight in the comment section below.
Below is Tesla's explanation of Enhanced Autopilot from three years ago. What do you think will change? Why might Tesla be considering offering this feature once again? A cheaper option for people who don't want to pay for FSD? A way to show off the new features and convince buyers to splurge for FSD?
