Tesla explains what’s happening to Autopilot with FSD Beta v11, adds voice feedback
In the release notes of the latest Tesla FSD Beta v11, Tesla explains what is happening to Autopilot with the new update, and it adds the capacity to send voice feedback.
Tesla FSD Beta v11 is both an exciting and scary step as it is supposed to merge Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot highway stacks.
FSD Beta enables Tesla vehicles to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.
Since the responsibility rests with the driver and not Tesla’s system, it is still considered a level-two driver-assist system, despite its name. It has been sort of a “two steps forward, one step back” type of program, as some updates have seen regressions in terms of driving capabilities.
Tesla has frequently been releasing new software updates to the FSD Beta program and adding more owners to it.
Since the wider release of the beta last year, there are currently over 400,000 Tesla owners in the program in North America – virtually every Tesla owner who bought the FSD package on their vehicles.
However, the bulk of these owners have yet to receive significant FSD beta updates as Tesla was supposed to release v11 to the fleet in November 2022, but the update has been stuck in testing within Tesla’s closed fleet since then.
The update is an important step because it includes many new neural networks, as Elon Musk stated, but from a consumer perspective, it’s also important because it is expected to merge Tesla’s FSD Beta software stack primarily used on roads and city streets with Tesla’s Autopilot software stack, which is used as a level 2 driver assist system on highways.
It has been delayed several times, but recently, Musk confirmed that a new version (v11.3) is going to a closed beta fleet this week – indicating that it might finally be about to be more widely released.
Now NotaTeslaapp, which tracks Tesla software updates, has obtained the FSD Beta v11.3 release notes, and they contain some interesting information.
Tesla starts out by explaining in more detail what it going to happen to Autopilot with this update:
Enabled FSD Beta on highway. This unifies the vision and planning stack on and off-highway and replaces the legacy highway stack, which is over four years old. The legacy highway stack still relies on several single-camera and single-frame networks, and was setup to handle simple lane-specific maneuvers. FSD Beta’s multi-camera video networks and next-gen planner, that allows for more complex agent interactions with less reliance on lanes, make way for adding more intelligent behaviors, smoother control and better decision making.
As expected this leaves the door open for some regression at first, but Tesla makes it clear that it believes this is the way to go long-term.
Another interesting new feature revealed by the release notes is the capacity to send Tesla voice memos about your FSD Beta experience. That’s something that Beta testers have been asking for a while as they can use it to give Tesla more details about a specific situation that they experience with the system.
A big part of the rest of the notes appears to focus on curbing some potentially dangerous driving behavior that FSD Beta has been known to do and has recently been described by NHTSA in its FSD Beta recall notice.
As we noted in our reporting of the recall, the notice made it sound like Tesla’s “fix” for the “recall” was simply its usual next software update, but now it looks like they did try to address some of these things more specifically as described in the release notes.
Here are the full Tesla FSD Beta v11.3 release notes:
- Enabled FSD Beta on highway. This unifies the vision and planning stack on and off-highway and replaces the legacy highway stack, which is over four years old. The legacy highway stack still relies on several single-camera and single-frame networks, and was set up to handle simple lane-specific maneuvers. FSD Beta’s multi-camera video networks and next-gen planner, that allows for more complex agent interactions with less reliance on lanes, make way for adding more intelligent behaviors, smoother control and better decision-making.
- 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. This includes cases where other vehicles run their red light or turn across ego’s path, stealing the right-of-way. Replay of previous collisions of this type suggests that 49% of the events would be mitigated by the new behavior. This improvement is now active in both manual driving and autopilot operation.
- Improved autopilot reaction time to red light runners and stop sign runners by 500ms, by increased reliance on object’s instantaneous kinematics along with trajectory estimates.
- Added a long-range highway lanes network to enable earlier response to blocked lanes and high curvature.Reduced goal pose prediction error for candidate trajectory neural network by 40% and reduced runtime by 3X. This was achieved by improving the dataset using heavier and more robust offline optimization, increasing the size of this improved dataset by 4X, and implementing a better architecture and feature space.
- Improved occupancy network detections by oversampling on 180K challenging videos including rain reflections, road debris, and high curvature.
- Improved recall for close-by cut-in cases by 20% by adding 40k autolabeled fleet clips of this scenario to the dataset. Also improved handling of cut-in cases by improved modeling of their motion into ego’s lane, leveraging the same for smoother lateral and longitudinal control for cut-in objects.
- Added “lane guidance module and perceptual loss to the Road Edges and Lines network, improving the absolute recall of lines by 6% and the absolute recall of road edges by 7%.
- 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 handling through high speed and high curvature scenarios by offsetting towards inner lane lines.
- 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.
- Improved longitudinal control response smoothness when following lead vehicles by better modeling the possible effect of lead vehicles’ brake lights on their future speed profiles.
- Improved detection of rare objects by 18% and reduced the depth error to large trucks by 9%, primarily from migrating to more densely supervised autolabeled datasets.
- Improved semantic detections for school busses by 12% and vehicles transitioning from stationary-to-driving by 15%. This was achieved by improving dataset label accuracy and increasing dataset size by 5%.
- Improved decision-making at crosswalks by leveraging neural network-based ego trajectory estimation in place of approximated kinematic models.
- Improved reliability and smoothness of merge control, by deprecating legacy merge region tasks in favor of merge topologies derived from vector lanes.
- Unlocked longer fleet telemetry clips (by up to 26%) by balancing compressed IPC buffers and optimized write scheduling across twin SOCs.
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The man behind Jaguar’s radical new EV design, Gerry McGovern, was reportedly fired this week and “escorted out of the office.”
Jaguar design boss who led controversial EV was fired
After unveiling the Type 00 last year, an ultra-luxury two-door EV concept, and what Jaguar claimed to be a preview of its new design, the struggling British automaker almost broke the internet.
The radical, chunky-looking concept came under heavy fire online with comparisons to the Pink Panther and Barbie’s dream car.
Even Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, and EV maker Lucid Motors poked fun at the controversial concept. Musk responded to Jaguar’s post on X last year, “Do you sell cars?” mocking its bold attempt at a rebrand.
Jaguar describes the Type 00 as “an indicator of design philosophy and intent for the coming new vehicles.” The concept not only looks like it was created with Grok or some other AI, but it’s also expected to be pretty pricey.
During an interview with The Sunday Times last year, former CEO Adrian Mardell said Jaguar’s new luxury EV lineup would likely be priced around £150,000, or nearly $200,000.
According to sources from inside the company, Jaguar’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern, was fired on Monday.
The sources told Autocar and Autocar India that McGovern was “escorted out of the office” and that his position was eliminated immediately.
When asked for more details, a JLR spokesperson responded, “No comment,” while Tata Motors has yet to respond.
The sudden news comes just a week after PB Balaji, former Tata Motors’ CFO, took over as Jaguar Land Rover CEO amid the company’s struggling efforts to turn things around.
McGovern’s departure after 21 years at JLR signals that bigger changes are coming for the ailing British luxury brand.
The first model from Jag’s new EV lineup was expected to be an electric four-door GT, set for production in mid-2026, followed by at least two more luxury EVs. With McGovern out, those plans will likely change. We’ll keep you updated with the latest.
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Tesla’s registration numbers for November 2025 are starting to roll in for European markets, and they paint a stark picture: demand is still collapsing in nearly every major market, with one massive exception that is propping up the entire region.
According to registration data tracked by Electrek, Tesla’s volumes in key European markets are down 12.3% year-over-year.
At first glance, the 12% decline in November might sound like good news, given Tesla’s sales in Europe have been declining by 30% to 40% each month all year, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
If you exclude Norway, where a specific tax-incentive change is pushing demand forward, Tesla’s sales in the rest of Europe have plummeted by 36.3% – in line with the year-long decline.
The Norway anomaly vs. the reality
We have been tracking Tesla’s difficult year in Europe for months now, but November’s data shows an unprecedented divergence.
In Norway, Tesla registrations skyrocketed 175% year-over-year to 6,215 units. This massive surge is due to buyers rushing to beat new EV tax changes expected in 2026, which would eliminate tax benefits for more expensive EVs, including virtually all of Tesla’s vehicles.
Norway alone accounted for over 35% of the total tracked volume this month.
Everywhere else, however, the floor is falling out.
Major volume markets are seeing declines of 40-60%:
- France: Down 57.8% (1,593 units)
- Sweden: Down 59.3% (588 units)
- Netherlands: Down 43.5% (1,627 units)
- Germany: Down 20.2% (1,763 units)
Italy remains the only other bright spot with 58.5% growth, but the volume (1,281 units) is too small to offset the crashes in France and Germany. Unlike Norway, where sales are booming as incentives expire, Tesla’s sales in Italy surged due to a new EV incentive.
It sent Tesla’s sales surging 58%, compared with the broader EV industry, which rose 170% in November due to the new incentives.
Here is the full breakdown of the markets reporting so far:
| Market | Nov 2025 | Nov 2024 | Change (Vol) | Change (%) |
| Norway | 6,215 | 2,258 | +3,957 | +175.2% |
| Germany | 1,763 | 2,208 | -445 | -20.2% |
| Netherlands | 1,627 | 2,881 | -1,254 | -43.5% |
| France | 1,593 | 3,774 | -2,181 | -57.8% |
| Spain | 1,523 | 1,669 | -146 | -8.7% |
| Italy | 1,281 | 808 | +473 | +58.5% |
| Belgium | 998 | 1,691 | -693 | -41.0% |
| Sweden | 588 | 1,446 | -858 | -59.3% |
| Denmark | 534 | 1,054 | -520 | -49.3% |
| Portugal | 425 | 801 | -376 | -46.9% |
| Austria | 406 | 440 | -34 | -7.7% |
| Finland | 257 | 323 | -66 | -20.4% |
| Switzerland | 242 | 536 | -294 | -54.9% |
Electrek’s Take
A single market, Norway, is currently saving Tesla’s European sales, but that is clearly temporary. It simply pulled a lot of demand from Tesla’s sales in 2026.
When you strip out the Norway anomaly, a 36% drop in the rest of Europe shows that Tesla’s demand crisis is continuing in Europe.
We are seeing the compound effect of two problems we’ve discussed at length:
- Stale Lineup: The Model Y refresh is here, but it hasn’t been enough to stop buyers from defecting to newer, more competitively priced options from Chinese OEMs like BYD and legacy players who are starting to catch up with Tesla with increasingly more competitive offering.
- Brand Toxicity: As polls in Germany have shown, Elon Musk’s continued political polarization is actively driving away the core EV-buying demographic in Western Europe. You can see this most clearly in markets like France and Sweden, where the drop is nearly 60%.
Tesla needs more than just price cuts or minor refreshes to stop this bleeding. They need to address the brand issue, or 2026 will be a very long year for the company in Europe.
Keep in mind that those 2025 results are also being compared to Tesla’s 2024 performance, which was already down from 2023. This decline has been going on for 2 years now, it only accelerated in 2025.
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Environment
How families could get stuck with higher electric bills if the AI data center boom goes bust
Homes near a data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Friday, July 25, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Data centers that haven’t been built yet are driving up electricity prices and could leave consumers on the hook for expensive power infrastructure if demand projections are wrong.
The race to build facilities that provide artificial intelligence has fueled a boom in data centers that train and run large language models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, upending a utility industry that grew used to 20 years of no increase in electricity demand.
But now, some investors and energy market analysts are questioning whether the AI race has turned into a bubble, one that would prove expensive to unravel as new transmission lines and power plants are built to support those data centers.
Consumers served by the largest electric grid in the U.S. will pay $16.6 billion to secure future power supplies just to meet demand from data centers from 2025 through 2027, according to a watchdog report published this month.
The grid is PJM Interconnection, serving more than 65 million people across 13 states, including the world’s largest data center hub in Virginia and fast-growing markets like northern Illinois and Ohio.
About 90% of that bill, or $15 billion, is to pay for future data center demand, according to Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor. This amounts to a “massive wealth transfer” from consumers to the data center industry, the watchdog told PJM in a Nov. 10 letter.
“A lot of us are very concerned that we are paying money today for a data center tomorrow,” said Abe Silverman, general counsel for the public utility board in New Jersey, one of the states served by PJM, from 2019 until 2023. “That’s a little bit scary if you don’t really have faith in the load forecast.”
Residential electricity prices in September rose 20% in Illinois, 12% in Ohio, and 9% in Virginia compared to the same period last year, according to data from the federal Energy Information Administration. Each of those states are among the top five markets for data centers in the U.S.
The costs associated with securing power for data centers is directly reflected in consumer’s utility bills, said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics. “When the wholesale power costs go up, people pay more, when it goes down people pay less,” he said.
Forecast uncertainty
PJM is forecasting 30 gigawatts of extra demand from data centers through 2030, but it’s unclear how much will actually materialize in the end. That’s the equivalent of the average annual power consumption of more than 24 million homes in the U.S.
Data center developers are shopping projects around in different locations before committing to a site, so there is likely duplication in the forecasts, said Cathy Kunkel, a consultant at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“We’re in a bit of a bubble,” Silverman, the New Jersey official, said. “There is no question that data center developers are coming out of the woodwork, putting in massive numbers of new requests. It’s impossible to say exactly how many of them are speculative versus real.”
Independent power producers such as Constellation Energy, the biggest owner of nuclear plants in the U.S., and Vistra Corp. warned earlier this year that data center demand forecasts are likely inflated.
“I just have to tell you, folks, I think the load is being overstated. We need to pump the brakes here,” Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said on the company’s earnings call in May.
Meanwhile, Vistra CEO James Burke also said in May that data center demand could be overstated by three to five times in some jurisdictions as developers scout their projects around the country.
‘Stranded cost’
The risk is that utilities invest in expensive infrastructure to meet data center demand, but not all those facilities are eventually built or they end up using less electricity than expected, said Kunkel, the consultant.
“It does tend to be consumers — residential, commercial, and other industrial ratepayers — that end up paying for overbuilt electrical infrastructure,” Kunkel said. The potential problem will come if capacity is built that isn’t needed, that “would tend to leave ratepayers holding the stranded cost bag.”
Data center demand forecasts have declined when utilities implement stricter rules.
In Ohio, for example, American Electric Power recently had requests for 30 gigawatts of electric connections from data centers.
AEP proposed stricter rules “to mitigate the risk that transmission infrastructure will be built for speculative data center projects,” according to a filing with the state utility commission in May 2024.
The AEP rules require data centers to pay for 85% of the energy they claim to need, even if they actually use less, to cover infrastructure costs. It also implemented an exit fee if data centers cancel their project or can’t meet the terms of their contract.
AEP’s data center requests in Ohio dropped by more than half, to 13 gigawatts after the utility commission approved the rules last July.
“When faced with potential financial commitments, the most speculative or uncertain data center projects did not submit load study requests — as was intended,” the Columbus, Ohio-based utility said in a statement.
The number of requests might decline further as the new rules force data centers to make binding contracts, it said.
The Data Center Coalition, a lobbying group for big tech companies, and other industry advocates have opposed AEP’s stricter rules as “discriminatory.”
Meeting demand
There is also a risk that the electrical grid grows less reliable as many large data center projects move forward. The 13 gigawatts of data center requests that AEP views as a more accurate figure, for example, is equivalent to about a dozen large nuclear plants. The infrastructure, in power plants and transmission lines, required to meet that demand is immense, the utility said.
The solution is for PJM to reject data centers’ requests for grid connection if there is not enough power to supply them, Bowring of Monitoring Analytics said. Data centers can either wait until there is enough power to supply them, or they can bring their own generation with them and jump the line, he said.
Monitoring Analytics filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week calling on PJM to adopt this approach.
“That will give data centers a clear incentive to bring their [own] generation,” Bowring said. That formula would also help clear up uncertainty over demand forecasts because data centers are unlikely to pay for infrastructure if they are not serious, he said.
Otherwise, the costs that consumers are bearing from data center demand will continue to grow, the watchdog warned FERC in its complaint.
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