Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk recently provided a number of important updates for Tesla’s upcoming FSD Beta Version 9 debut. The eagerly awaited update, which has already been delayed, is expected to bring some significant enhancements to the already impressive driver-assist system.
Elon Musk clarified in a recent series of tweets that Tesla had been working on removing radar from the FSD Beta, which the CEO claims would result in a significant improvement in the efficiency of the advanced driver-assist suite. Musk’s update was short, but he did say that the FSD Beta V9 release should be available next week, at least for US testers.
“We had to focus on removing radar & confirming safety. That release goes out next week to US production. Then a week or two to polish pure vision FSD & v9 beta will release. Difference between v8 & v9 is gigantic,” the Tesla CEO wrote.
Elon Musk has highlighted Tesla’s shift to a pure vision system in recent months. Back in March, the CEO noted that pure vision is the way to “real-world AI.” Musk later explained that vision has “much more precision” than radar, and that cameras have several orders of magnitude more bits/sec than radar. Cameras could then leave behind radar as vision processing improves.
Elon Musk, interestingly, stated that Tesla’s vision-only approach should eliminate issues such as phantom braking, which occurs when Autopilot reaches a bridge or overpass. He also mentioned that the FSD Beta V9 expansion would take place in a month or two. Musk also acknowledged that correctly forecasting the release of the driver-assist system’s big beta was difficult.
“I think we’re maybe a month or two away from wide beta. But these things are hard to predict accurately. The work we had to do for pure vision driving was needed for FSD, so much more progress has been made than it would seem,” Musk said.
Finally, Elon Musk gave a brief update on the introduction of FSD functions like Smart Summon in Europe. Musk was upbeat about the project’s release, but he was skeptical about the projected timeline. However, the CEO did mention that in Europe, features like Smart Summon should be released concurrently with FSD, as the driverless function is just a subset of the Full Self-Driving suite.
It remains to be seen if Tesla’s move to a pure vision approach would allow it to resolve the challenges that Autopilot and the FSD suite are currently facing. However, a patent published in March suggests that the company has been considering a camera-only method for some time. The patent describes a system that uses two neural networks to accurately gauge the distances of objects using only image data.
