Tesla FSD 12.5 update rolls out to Model Y first as it may be approved for Europe and China
Tesla has been making efforts to gain regulatory approval for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) option outside of North America lately. Elon Musk visited China twice over the matter, and Tesla has been demonstrating FSD v12 to European regulators, too.
Elon is so confident in the merits of the latest v12.5 update that merges the city and highway driving stacks, that he predicts FSD approval in Europe and China before year's end.
"With version 12.5, and maybe 12.6, but pretty soon," said Musk, "we will ask for regular regulatory approval of the Tesla supervised FSD in Europe, China, and other countries." "I think we're likely to receive that before the end of the year," he added, "which will be a helpful demand driver in those regions, obviously."
Beside the merger of city and highway stacks, which cleans up a lot of legacy code, the 12.5 update will finally bring FSD to the Cybertruck. Owners of Tesla's first electric pickup will have to be patient for longer, though, as the update will go to the Model Y first.
"We are focusing on just Model Y with HW4 for the initial release," informs Musk, to "make sure that works well, then broaden." That's not to say that older Tesla vehicles with a Hardware 3.0 kit won't be getting FSD 12.5, but Tesla may need more time as HW3 "requires extra work to optimize the code."
The move is in contrast with the v12 rollout, when Elon said that the cars on Hardware 3.0 are a priority. "Hardware 4 will ultimately be better, but all training is for Hardware 3, with HW4 running in emulation mode," he advised at the time, but now the Model Y units with HW4 seem to be the preferred testing ground for a public v12.5 release.
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