Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Goes Live For Some Cybertruck Owners

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature is now being rolled out to a select group of Cybertruck owners as part of its early access program, meeting the company’s end-of-September deadline for introducing the system.

Cybertruck buyers who paid $93,990 or more to be early adopters of the vehicle, which has been in high demand, are now receiving the much-anticipated FSD feature, although it is not yet available to the general public. Reports from the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, confirmed by Electrek, indicate that several owners have successfully installed the FSD update on their vehicles.

The FSD version currently being deployed is 12.5.5 (v12), a supervised iteration of Tesla’s advanced driving assistance system. This version of FSD still requires a human driver to be behind the wheel, ready to take control when needed. The system uses AI to handle all aspects of driving, from city streets to highways, while continuously monitoring driver attention through the vehicle’s in-cabin camera, even if the driver is wearing sunglasses.

Owners Test the FSD Feature

According to Tesla fan account Whole Mars Catalog, who shared a trial run of the FSD feature on X, there have been instances where human intervention was necessary—one such example involved a driver having to stop the Cybertruck from driving into a median after making a left turn.

The rollout comes nearly 10 months after the first Cybertruck deliveries, with Tesla previously stating that FSD would be available to Cybertruck owners in September. Although the feature has started to reach early access users, most buyers will likely have to wait another month or more for it to become widely available, given Tesla’s history with FSD updates.

Version 12.5.5 marks the first FSD version to combine city and highway driving into a unified software stack, relying entirely on end-to-end AI for navigation. Additionally, the update description highlights the new vision-based attention monitoring feature that works even when drivers are wearing sunglasses, further enhancing the vehicle’s safety features.

FSD Still Under Scrutiny

Despite the progress, Tesla’s FSD has faced ongoing scrutiny. Independent automotive testing group AMCI recently found that Tesla’s FSD could drive only about 13 miles on average before requiring human intervention. This level of performance continues to raise questions about the system’s readiness for widespread, unsupervised use.

Elon Musk has long promised fully autonomous driving capabilities, and he recently reaffirmed that Tesla could achieve unsupervised self-driving by the end of 2025. However, Musk has made similar claims for nearly a decade without delivering the feature. The company is also expected to unveil its robotaxi concept, which relies on FSD, in less than two weeks, heightening pressure on Tesla to meet its self-driving goals.