Tesla is building its own maps for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to fix some of its most common problems: reading speed limits, parking and choosing routes. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI, described the effort on the company's Q3 2026 earnings call.
The move is a reversal for a company whose CEO, Elon Musk, spent years arguing that self-driving systems relying on maps are brittle. Elluswamy answered a shareholder question that listed map-related issues among FSD's biggest problems, alongside speed limits and parking. "We shouldn't be depending on external people's maps," he said. Tesla will use a new AI-based mapping and navigation architecture, fed by what the fleet collectively learns, which will also learn individual drivers' preferences and respond to voice commands.
Image: MSN — https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-says-fsd-is-safer-but-its-numbers-tell-a-messier-story/ar-AA25HHma
The first pieces will arrive with FSD v15, which will handle the beginning and end of trips. Over the following months the system will take over navigation, parking and destination handling. No release date for v15 was given.
Tesla has changed its position before. In 2015, when it launched Autopilot, it said it was building high-precision maps with "100 times the level of granularity" of standard navigation. In 2019, at Autonomy Day, Musk called them "a huge mistake," arguing they make a self-driving system "extremely brittle."
The point is not a formal contradiction. Tesla has always used navigation maps, and building its own rather than licensing them is not inconsistent on its own. The problem is what the map must fix: speed limits, parking and routes are about understanding the environment, and that is where FSD often fails. A Belgian road safety group found that in some 30 km/h zones cars averaged 44 km/h, partly because the screen showed 50 km/h. In the US, NHTSA is investigating a similar issue covering about 1,000 Model Y and Cybercab vehicles.
In this sense Tesla moves closer to Waymo, which maps a city by driving sensor-equipped vehicles through it before launching service, and keeps the maps updated as its fleet drives. The main difference is that Waymo's cars carry lidar on top. Tesla's Robotaxi service currently operates city by city, inside defined areas, and Tesla is not talking about centimeter-level HD maps. A fleet-built map that keeps getting more detailed could still head that way.
Image: YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOVo4VjTBYI
Impact on the Italian market
FSD is not yet available to owners in Italy, and its European extension is on hold until the EU vote in December.
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