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Model 3

Tesla to replace wood trim on Model 3 with non-woven fabric

Tesla has recently announced that it will replace the wood trim in its Model 3 cars with non-woven fabric. The reason for the change is not known, but some speculate that it may be a cost-saving measure that also adds a more modern look. Personally, I have never loved the wood trim, and many aftermarket brands offer wrappers for owners to customize them. It would be wise to wait and see the quality and appearance of the new trim before making any conclusions.

Incentives

Tesla adding 5k to trade-in value for early S/X owners with Unlimited Supercharging

If you are thinking of purchasing a new Model X or Model S, Tesla is offering $5k in free Supercharging as an incentive.

Tesla offering discounts on new Model S/X cars in existing inventory in Canada

For our friends in Canada, Tesla is offering incentives to buy the new Model S and Model X. In some cases, the discount is up to $10,890 for a Model S and $10,530 for a Model X.

Hardware 4

HW4 unit analysis by Greentheonly

The Twitter thread contains a lot more detail and pictures. Greentheonly was able to get a first look into an HW4 unit, and here are some interesting bits:

• The form factor is totally different, which most likely rules out retrofits.
• The CPU cores range from 12 to 20 (5 clusters of 4 cores each), maxing at 2.35GHz, and idling at 1.37GHz.
• There are 12 camera connectors, although one is marked as spare.
• The name of the connectors seems to indicate that they will be cameras in the bumper, hopefully removing one of the main blind spots of the current system.

Tesla’s Hardware 4.0 may be capable of bird's eye

As we mentioned earlier, HW4 seems to be adding cameras in the bumpers. One can only hope that this means Tesla will be adding the much-requested bird’s-eye view if it’s true.

Charging

CCS Combo Adapter price drop

With Tesla opening up the Supercharger network to non-Tesla vehicles, it might be a good idea to get a CCS combo adapter just in case. Tesla has lowered the price this week from $250 to $175.

FSD

FSD v11 driving visualization

FSD v11 has started to be released to Tesla employees, and with that came the first pictures. In one of the pictures, we can see the new driving visualization. The new visualization also shows a red line where the car will stop and fades the blue “tentacle” beyond that point.

Tesla FSD Beta V11.3 starts shipping to employees

Some highlights from the release notes (the article contains the full list of improvements):

• FSD Beta on the highway. This unifies the vision and planning stack on and off-highway and replaces the legacy highway stack, which is over four years old.
• Added voice drive notes. After an intervention, you can now send Tesla an anonymous voice message describing your experience to help improve Autopilot.
• Expanded Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) to handle vehicles that cross ego’s path. Tesla estimates that 49% of these events would be mitigated by the new behavior, on both manual and Autopilot driving.
• Improved overall geometry and stability of lane predictions by updating the “lane guidance” module representation with information relevant to predicting crossing and oncoming lanes.
• Improved lane changes, including earlier detection and handling for simultaneous lane changes, better gap selection when approaching deadlines, better integration between speed-based and nav-based lane change decisions, and more differentiation between the FSD driving profiles with respect to speed lane changes.