UPDATE: Tesla Cybertruck Still Missing Key Technology

[UPDATE] After this story was posted early Sunday morning, some Cybertruck owners said on a forum Sunday afternoon that they were getting FSD for the first time. In this case, Supervised v12.5.5. That said, a CT owner I contacted was not able to get it. And social media indicates that it’s hit or miss whether CT owners get it or not. This could mean limited availability of the update.

The Cybertruck is still missing the one thing that CEO Elon Musk obsesses about: autonomy.

It’s been almost 10 months since the Cybertruck, arguably Tesla’s most technologically advanced vehicle, started to ship to customers and it still lacks Autopilot and Full Self Driving. The latter is a key component in Musk’s long-term vision for Tesla and is expected to be fleshed out at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles on October 10.

FSD on Cybertruck was supposed to arrive with version 12.5, according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk in July. And on September 4 Tesla AI posted that Cybertruck FSD was coming this month and then as recently as September 23 Tesla seemed to hint it was imminent. But as of September 29, it has yet to drop. So far, the only tangible ray of hope is Autopark, which just landed this month.

The FSD update is increasingly crucial as the Cybertruck gains popularity. Tesla sold over 5,000 Cybertrucks in the month of July, beating the Ford Mustang Mach-E by a couple of hundred units and taking the No. 3 spot among the top 10 best selling EVs in the U.S., according to S&P Global Mobility.

Waiting for the update to drop: I chatted this week with a Cybertruck Foundation Series owner, who had just updated his CT with Autopark and has been counting the days for the FSD update to arrive. “A little disappointed but I also understand it’s new tech that needs the utmost caution before rolling out to these 6k lbs massive trucks,” the owner, who is based in Los Angeles, told me.

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He is also disappointed that “they haven’t given us autopilot yet. That’s basic tech in many new cars now.” He’s right about that. It’s standard on all other Tesla vehicles. And other legacy automakers offer similar technology — often referred to as “lane centering” — that is roughly equivalent to Autopilot.

But FSD is different. FSD is next level. I recently tested FSD 12.5 on two Teslas, a Model 3 with the Dawn Project, where I was the passenger, and a Model Y, which I test drove by myself. FSD aspires to be fully autonomous not unlike Waymo, an autonomous geofenced driverless taxi (which I’ve also used in Los Angeles). That is, FSD aspires to drive the car without driver intervention. Although FSD is very impressive, full driverless autonomy is currently not possible — based on my experience.

And getting FSD to work on the Cybertruck has presented special challenges. The CT has unique requirements because of its large wedge-shaped stainless steel design. The CT also has different sensor configurations compared to other Tesla vehicles. The upshot is the FSD software needs to be adapted to work with the CT’s odd design.

Morgan Stanley in a research note this month said that “heading into Tesla’s ‘10/10’ robotaxi event we are, frankly, struggling to see how the day can live up to investors' high expectations. Other than demonstrating FSD v12.5 and offering rides in a Gen 1 ‘Cybercab’ what else is in store? Perhaps there will be a detailed ‘total addressable market’ analysis showing tens of trillions of passenger vehicle miles and tens of trillions of $ of potential recurrent revenue (by 2050).”