The Twitter account @Tesla_App_iOS is an account that monitors new releases of the Tesla iOS app. They’re able to open the binary and compare the code changes to the previous builds, even extracting new assets in the package.
Today, they published some interesting information found in version 4.21.5 of the iOS app. This comes at a time when Tesla rolls out FSD Beta 11.4.2 to a growing number of vehicles.
Release Notes Videos
To begin, they found a reference to Release Notes Online Videos: Release Videos. This suggests Tesla may be augmenting their release notes with video, something that has historically been constrained to text and images and been very technical in nature.
Conceptually, it seems like a good idea for Tesla to add videos to release notes, helping customers from a variety of skill levels understand what’s changing about their vehicles. Often the changes are minor improvements, but there have also been times when new features are released and could benefit from a better explanation (1-minute video vs 1 paragraph of text).
This would help users learn more about their vehicle’s capabilities and ensure Tesla customers benefit from the development effort from the team at Tesla.
Update
We now have confirmation of the new Lootbox page
Lootbox
The new app also contains a new graphic, we haven’t seen before. A 3-dimensional Lootbox with the filename ‘lootbox_intro.png’. The Lootbox icon has been available in the app in the top-right corner next to your profile picture. Tapping the Lootbox would take you to the screen to review your referral credits, or to share your referral link with friends (i.e. https://ts.la/jason45054).
The new graphic may simply be shown as you transition from the home screen into the Lootbox, and I expect it may even contain an animation. It would be nice to see this in the car’s software as well.
Boombox V2
Boombox is the feature that allows you to play sounds through the external speaker installed under the front of some Tesla vehicles (available in select regions).
Boombox version 1 requires this to be controlled in the car, however back in February 22, RyeRy Beatty asked Elon if they could add Boombox control from the mobile app.. Well RyeRy, your wishes may be about to come true.
Emergency lance Keep
The next item is a little less clear, something called Emergency Lane Keep Enabled. This is prefixed by GUI (Graphical User Interface or something on-screen), along with LLS (Logical Subsystem).
In the scenario that a Tesla vehicle has an issue (i.e. is involved in an accident, or has a hardware failure), the vehicle will need to pull over to the side, into the emergency lane. Even the latest FSD Beta software build doesn’t contain this, but would need to be added as a failsafe before robotaxi was possible.
The interesting part of this is the Emergency Lane Keep (enabled). Enabled is a reference to interpret, a setting with values enabled or disabled, but why you would keep in the emergency lane is strange.. perhaps if the vehicle was driveable, but was not able to perform at safe highway speeds. One scenario I could imagine was if the battery State of Charge was incredibly low and driving slowly was the only option to make it to a charging location. There are obviously a lot of obstacles in emergency lanes (including other cars), so this is a strange one.
Ride Request
Now for the most interesting piece of code in the release – GUI_ADAPTIVE_RIDE_REQUEST.
Currently, there is no ability to request rides in a Tesla, this is something Musk spoke of back in 2019 during Autonomy Day when he talked about a future with plentiful robotaxis where you’d just request one from your phone.
While FSD Beta is getting better with each release, this feels really early for anything relating to customers requesting rides to be in the app. If you have thoughts, let us know in the comments below.
Currently Smart Summon is the closest we technology we have to this, where owners can summon the vehicle to come to them, however there are severe restrictions currently that limit the potential benefits of this. Firstly your car has to be in a carpark, secondly, you have to be within a zone that’s around 30m which means by the time you open the app, tap smart summon, the phone and car start talking to each other, you’ve almost arrived at the car.
Tesla has spoken about a new revision to Smart Summon called ‘Actually Smart Summon’ that moves the logic to an AI-based approach, much like the rest of their software stack and would have a much better chance of delivering pickup and dropoff (Reverse Smart Summon) capabilities necessary for ride the owner, or ride share /robotaxi customer.
