July 30, 2024
Karan Singh
Tesla recently added support for YouTube Music and Amazon Music in its latest update, 2024.26.3. Tesla now offers nine music services in its vehicles: Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, online streaming (via LiveOne, formerly Slacker Radio), Caraoke, TuneIn, and traditional FM radio.
There are quite a few options to choose from, but there are still some popular services like SiriusXM and Pandora. Tesla doesn’t cover every niche, but this list should cover most users.
Amazon Music – Free Plan
On the music front, we recently reported that Tesla may soon offer Hi-Fi enabled Apple Music, but Amazon Music doesn’t appear to include Hi-Fi support, even with a premium subscription. However, unlike Spotify, which requires a premium subscription to play music in a Tesla, Amazon Music is available at its free tier.
The free plan gives you access to music, curated playlists, Amazon Radio, and podcasts, but it shows ads and doesn’t let you pick individual songs you want to listen to. The next plan, Amazon Music Prime (via Amazon Prime), offers ad-free music and song selection. Both services are limited to streaming on one device per account.
The highest level, Amazon Music Unlimited, also offers lossless Hi-Fi audio and bit-perfect Hi-Fi, but not in Tesla. We can expect this to change in the future, as Amazon and Tesla expand the service to include in-car Hi-Fi audio. As for streaming, there are Individual and Family plans, with the Unlimited level supporting one device or up to six devices simultaneously.
YouTube Music
YouTube Music doesn’t offer lossless or offline support, but it’s bundled with YouTube Premium, and you can log into Tesla’s YouTube app to watch ad-free videos.
There’s a personal plan for streaming on a single device and a family plan for streaming on up to five devices simultaneously.
Interface commonality
One of the coolest things Tesla has done here is make the interfaces between streaming services very similar. This means that each music service has a consistent, similar, Tesla-friendly interface. You can switch between them and keep the same basic set of controls. Tesla is committed to integrating third-party services and wants to ensure that many users can enjoy these additional streaming options.
Both of these services are available without a premium connection when connected to WiFi or via your cellular hotspot, but a premium connection is required to stream over LTE.
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July 29, 2024
Karan Singh
In the X post, Elon Musk confirmed that vehicles equipped with Hardware 3 will be provided with FSD V12.5 within about 10 days.
When FSD V12.5 was first rolled out, it was only deployed to Model Y vehicles with AI4 (Hardware 4). However, just a few days later, FSD V12.5 began to be deployed to most AI4-based vehicles.
Hardware 3
Hardware 3 owners feel left out in this regard, especially since the differences between Hardware 3 and AI4 weren’t supposed to happen until later this year. Elon has said that while AI4 still emulates Hardware 3, the additional computing power available on the new hardware will make development easier.
This means that Tesla is developing for Hardware 3, but using the unconstrained computing power of AI4 to test and do initial deployments. After optimization, it will be deployed to Hardware 3 vehicles. This is very similar to how most software is written – written on much more powerful PCs, then scaled down and optimized to fit the average computer.
But Tesla is clearly not abandoning its Hardware 3 and Tegra-based infotainment (MCU 1) customers just yet. Update 2024.26.3 will bring FSD V12 to MCU1 vehicles for the first time, which are based on NVIDIA’s older infotainment chipsets. This is a big leap in optimization and compatibility, and demonstrates Tesla and Elon’s commitment to bring unsupervised FSD to all vehicles built after 2016.
V12.5 is important
FSD V12.5.1 also saw some amazing improvements, including the ability to navigate parking lots and unpaved/unmarked roads as demonstrated by X’s AIDRIVR below. This is one of the key components required for Tesla’s Robotaxi as well as Actually Smart Summon, Park Seek and Banish Autopark. And Elon said there’s more to come.
FSD 12.5.1 prevents X Takeover events pic.twitter.com/XjPPqfroNi
— ΛI DRIVR (@AIDRIVR) July 28, 2024
We haven’t heard of any of these features making it into FSD V12.5 yet, but we do know that sunglasses-enabled hands-free, end-to-end highway stacking, more natural lane changing, and Cybertruck FSD are on the way. This long list of improvements is documented in the Update 2024.20.15 release notes, where they are all listed as upcoming improvements.
We’re excited to see FSD V12.5 coming to Hardware 3 vehicles, especially since the majority of current Tesla vehicles use Hardware 3 and not AI4. Elon has stated that he doesn’t foresee an upgrade path between Hardware 3 and AI4 due to complexity, but it’s always possible that Tesla could develop new AI4-based hardware that meets the power consumption capabilities and space constraints of vehicles running HW3.
July 29, 2024
Karan Singh
As part of the 2024.26.3 release notes published by Tesla, it looks like for the first time in a while, an FSD update will be coming to MCU1-equipped vehicles.
Last updated: 2022
The last update MCU1 vehicles received was FSD Beta v10.69.3.3, released on 2022.8.10.10, which is a while ago, but it’s a great update for early adopters of Tesla’s FSD.
This was back when the FSD Beta program required a minimum safety score to participate, meaning all you had to do was hit the “Request FSD Beta” button on the Autopilot settings page. MCU 1 vehicle owners had to do the free Autopilot camera upgrade (if they purchased FSD) or paid upgrade (if they subscribed to FSD) to receive the FSD Beta.
FSD v10.69.3.3 is old by today’s FSD standards, and this first update to these legacy MCU 1 vehicles is a great example of Tesla’s commitment to bringing autonomy to older vehicles. We’re happy to see this is the case, especially with the Hardware 3/AI4 fork approaching that has everyone on edge. FSD v12.5 has only been provided to AI4 (Tesla’s new name for HW4) vehicles, not yet to Hardware 3 vehicles.
Tesla’s MCU 1 vehicles are equipped with an NVIDIA Tegra processor for the infotainment unit, but also have FSD hardware 3 that is used to power the FSD.
Free Trial
Owners receiving FSD v12 for the first time on their Tegra-based vehicles will also be eligible for a free trial if they already have the Autopilot camera upgrade installed. This is the same 4-week trial that (almost) all vehicles received in the US/Canada when FSD v12 was first released.
Some unlucky owners who moved from 2024.8.9 (FSD v11) to the FSD v12 branch have not yet received their free trial for some reason, but we hope Tesla will resolve this issue.