Elon Musk announced a holiday software update containing a sneak preview of the automaker’s Full Self-Driving feature and additional games for Tesla Arcade. The all-electric car maker has always released holiday surprises for its customers, but this year may have blown all the company's previous gifts out of the water.
Tesla’s CEO tweeted the announcement earlier today, just four days before Christmas Eve. The sneak peek at FSD Elon Musk mentioned in his tweet may be the long-awaited inner-city driving capabilities that Musk mentioned during a podcast interview with ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood and analyst Tasha Keeney.
In early November, Tesla released traffic cone recognition in an update numbered 2019.36.1, which alluded to the company testing out inner-city driving for its Full Self-Driving feature. The traffic cone recognition update was called Driving Visualisation Improvements by Tesla and was described as follows:
“The driving visualization now displays traffic cones. In cases where a traffic cone is detected and Navigate on Autopilot is engaged (requires Full Self Driving Capability), the vehicle is designed to suggest a lane change (or attempt a lane change if REQUIRE LANE CHANGE CONFIRMATION is set to NO) to avoid cones. As always, you are responsible for your vehicle and are required to pay attention at all times.”
Tesla holiday software update has FSD sneak preview, Stardew Valley, Lost Backgammon & a few other things
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2019
Also, in early November, Tesla Autopilot reportedly hit 2 billion real-world miles, yet another milestone for the automaker’s Full Self-Driving suite. Compared to most companies working towards autonomous driving, Tesla has been deemed the closest to true driverless solutions by most forward-thinking analysts.
Cathie Wood from ARK Invest certainly seems to think Tesla’s work in autonomy will be quite significant in the long run. Wood placed a US$6K price target on TSLA shares, and one of her reasons for doing so was Tesla’s autonomous real-world driving data.
Between the little improvements that have been released for Autopilot and FSD, plus the 2 billion miles worth of real-world data the automaker has collected, Tesla sure seems close to introducing a "feature complete" version of its Full Self-Driving suite. The holiday update Elon Musk announced will not only give the world a sneak peek into FSD but a small preview into how close Tesla is to completing the autonomous driving feature.
Beside FSD, Elon Musk also announced new games for Tesla Arcade. Stardew Valley, a farming simulation role-playing game, will be coming to the in-vehicle gaming platform along with Lost Backgammon.
Musk also mentioned that “a few other things” would be released in the software update. One of those “things” could be the anticipated update to Tesla Theater. Video services like Crunchyroll and Twitch are expected to be released soon, thanks to the sleuthing skills of Tesla hacker @greentheonly.
Featured Image Credit: Tesla/YouTube
About the Author
Claribelle Deveza
Longtime writer and news/book editor. Writing about Tesla allows me to contribute something good to the world, while doing something I love.
