The 2025 Shareholder Meeting hinted at Tesla’s next step for FSD — allowing texting and driving. FSD v14.1.x updates have been rolling out, while we wait for FSD v14.2 and FSD v14.3, and Tesla is now hinting at reducing the amount of attention required from the driver.
While the ultimate goal is for the driver not to have to supervise the vehicle at all, Tesla will get there in baby steps — next with allowing texting and driving.
During the shareholder meeting, Elon Musk stated that Tesla is at the point where they “almost feel comfortable allowing people to text and drive.” He goes on to say that Tesla is looking closely at safety statistics and that they will “allow you to text and drive essentially.”
Timeline
The transition is not a distant, “in two weeks” aspiration, as many have come to know and love. Instead, Elon set a more reasonable, but still imminent timeline. Based on safety statistics, Tesla’s goal is to begin loosening supervision within “the next month or two.”
This suggests that the internal data Tesla is seeing from V14 is already statistically superior to previous versions, and the company is preparing to take the next step — reduced supervision.
Stats Don’t Lie
Tesla’s added layer of confidence isn’t arbitrary. It’s being justified by a new set of safety statistics that Tesla is likely building to convince regulators that FSD will be ready for autonomy. That doesn’t mean this will happen tomorrow or that FSD v14 is ready today, but Tesla appears to be gathering statistics specifically for FSD to make its case in the future.
Up until now, Tesla has used a combination of Autopilot and FSD miles driven to prove its “safer than a human” argument. However, they’re now specifically using data from FSD and excluding Autopilot, likely indicating they’re seeing even lower accident rates with FSD enabled than with Autopilot. At the shareholder meeting, Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm claimed that in the last year, FSD use (excluding Autopilot) has resulted in:
85% fewer crashes
35,000 fewer fatalities
2 million fewer injuries
Tesla is working to build a statistical argument that it’s safer to allow FSD to drive — even with reduced supervision.
Text and Driving & Reduced Attention
Elon Musk has mentioned multiple times that Tesla often sees users using FSD, only to disable the feature to send a text and then re-enable it. In these cases, he said that it’d actually be safer to keep FSD enabled and let the user send the message during that brief period.
Allowing drivers to text is a form of reduced driver supervision, and it sounds like this is Tesla’s next goal. FSD V14 includes an interesting, undocumented feature that alerts the user when they need to pay closer attention. It sounds like Tesla is preparing for varying levels of required attention. There will be periods when the vehicle is more confident, and at these points, Tesla may allow reduced driver attention.
This doesn’t mean users will be able to use their phones without looking at the road, but it does mean Tesla may allow longer periods of inattention without penalizing the user, such as by sending a short text.
Tesla isn’t going to achieve Unsupervised FSD overnight, and understanding the vehicle’s confidence levels in certain situations and allowing for reduced attention may be how we see the march toward genuine autonomy.
FSD V14.3
During the shareholder meeting, Elon stated that he thinks FSD V14.3 will be the point where drivers can “pretty much fall asleep and wake up at your destination.”
Back in October, Elon was hopeful that FSD v14.2 and 14.3 would roll out just weeks after FSD v14.1, but it looks Tesla has been focused on bug fixes in the few point releases we’ve seen. We still expect to see FSD v14.2 at least before the end of the year.
NHTSA & Regulatory Hurdles
Tesla is starting to arm itself with key data, like the 35,000 fewer fatalities statistic. If Tesla allows drivers to send short texts while FSD is enabled, there’s no doubt that NHTSA will be involved. This data will likely be the cornerstone of Tesla’s legal argument to allow such a feature.
