Tesla 2026.38.5 Combines FSD 14.3.12 and Halloween Mode in an Early Rollout

Tesla's latest supervised-driving update has reached a new software branch, but the first publicly tracked installations are too few to call it a broad rollout. Teslascope lists software 2026.38.5, carrying FSD (Supervised) v14.3.12 for AI4 vehicles, as released October 10 . At our October 11 check, its dashboard showed five installations. The practical change is the arrival of the FSD build alongside features on the newer 2026.38 software family—not evidence that every item in the accompanying driving notes is newly introduced. The distinction matters because Tesla's software version, its FSD version, and a car's hardware generation describe different things. Owners reading a long release-note page can easily mistake accumulated capabilities for a fresh breakthrough, or assume a shared vehicle-software number means identical driving software. The available records support a narrower, useful story: a new package is reaching some cars, with hardware-specific features and a still-tiny public sample. The short version New package: 2026.38.5 is listed with FSD v14.3.12 for AI4/HW4 vehicles. Small observed sample: Teslascope showed five installations when checked; that is its sample, not Tesla's worldwide total. Mixed hardware: the same tracker also showed an HW3 installation and separate v14.3 Lite notes. Do not read that as HW3 receiving the full AI4 build. Unchanged responsibility: FSD remains supervised. The release notes explicitly say it does not make a vehicle autonomous. What the first records actually establish The strongest rollout evidence available for this report is Teslascope's version-specific dashboard. It identifies 2026.38.5 as AI4 V14.3.12, gives an October 10 release date, and lists five recorded installations at the time of access. The displayed hardware breakdown was four HW4 cars and one HW3 car. All installations with a known country were listed in the United States; the recorded previous version was 2026.33.5. Those observations establish that the package is appearing in a connected-vehicle tracking service. They do not establish the total number of cars Tesla has updated, the number invited to download it, or the date another owner will receive it. Owners who choose to connect to a tracking service are not a random sample of Tesla's entire fleet. Five records cannot support a reliable forecast of fleet penetration or an assessment of driving reliability. There is also a timing distinction worth preserving. The page's release date is October 10, while its displayed installation-day table recorded the observed cars on October 11. A release being identified and an installation being logged need not happen at the same moment. We therefore describe an early rollout rather than attaching a precise fleet-wide start time to these records. Grok-powered search of Tesla discussion, including Teslascope's X presence, surfaced the new version and its small initial wave as a topic for verification. That is a discovery signal, not a measured ranking of the day's most popular X subjects. The reporting here rests on the accessible software dashboard and independently maintained release-note pages, not on search summaries or engagement claims. Two version numbers, different hardware paths Record checked What it shows What it does not establish 2026.38.5 vehicle software Newer package listed as released October 10 Universal availability or identical features on every car FSD v14.3.12 Full supervised-driving build labeled for HW4 in the published notes Full v14.3.12 running on HW3 FSD v14.3 Lite Separate HW3 notes on Teslascope's package page Equivalent model capability or performance to HW4 Five tracked installations Four HW4 and one HW3 in the access-time snapshot Tesla's worldwide installation count Sources: Teslascope 2026.38.5 dashboard and Not a Tesla App release notes, accessed October 11, 2026. Tracker counts can change after publication. Why the release-note comparison changes the headline Not a Tesla App's 2026.38.5 page reproduces a substantial FSD v14.3.12 feature list: reinforcement-learning and vision-encoder improvements, changes to parking behavior, responses to unusual vehicles and objects, small-animal handling, driver monitoring, and other driving refinements. Read in isolation, that list could sound like a large set of additions arriving together this weekend. However, the site's 2026.33.5 page for FSD v14.3.11 already contains the same major claims. It includes the reinforcement-learning upgrade, the vision-encoder description, the MLIR compiler/runtime rewrite, and the claimed 20% faster reaction time. It also includes the small-animal handling language and the intervention-free distance display. That comparison is essential to interpreting this release. The fact that a capability appears beneath a new point-version heading does not demonstrate that it first shipped in that point version. A release-note page is a description of the package, not necessarily a line-by-line account of changes relative to the immediately preceding package. Without a more granular changelog, the defensible claim is that v14.3.12 carries those descriptions forward. The reaction-time figure deserves particular care. It is a claim in the published Tesla release-note text, not an independently measured reduction in crashes or driver interventions. The sources reviewed do not provide a public benchmark method that lets readers translate that percentage into a real-world safety outcome. Nor should the figure be reported as a new 20% improvement over v14.3.11: the older version's notes already say it. For owners, the absence of a detailed difference list does not mean the point release contains no useful fixes. It means outsiders cannot responsibly identify the size or nature of every underlying change from the version number alone. Installation records can show distribution. Release notes can document stated behavior. Neither substitutes for a controlled comparison of performance. Halloween Mode and everyday trip features join the package The clearest consumer-facing contrast is outside the driving model. The 2026.38.5 notes include Halloween Mode for eligible AMD-equipped vehicles, with a ghost costume for the car visualization, seasonal sounds and lighting, a scheduled light show, and a photobooth. These are software-package features, not evidence of more capable autonomous driving. The notes also list Supercharger site maps at select locations, showing a site layout and live stall status on arrival, and the ability to set desired arrival energy from the phone. The arrival-energy feature requires Tesla mobile app version 4.58.0 or later, according to the reproduced notes. These are tangible conveniences for planning a trip, although a listing does not guarantee that every location or every vehicle supports them. Hardware labels remain important here as well. Halloween Mode is marked for AMD systems, the site-map entry on this page is labeled for Intel vehicles, and dynamic headlight leveling is marked for specific vehicles. Those differences illustrate why a screenshot from one owner's car cannot serve as a complete feature checklist for another owner's car with a different computer or configuration. Some items have more serious consequences than seasonal visuals. Emergency Drive Away is described as allowing a shift into Drive while a Supercharger cable remains attached. The same notes explicitly warn that doing so will damage the vehicle and Supercharger and may leave the owner responsible for repair costs; they also say activation shares short vehicle-camera recordings with Tesla. This is emergency-only functionality, not a convenience feature to experiment with. Owners should consult their own vehicle's documentation and displayed release notes rather than infer applicability from a general list. That is especially important when a package combines entertainment features, charging information, safety-related behavior, and hardware-dependent FSD variants under one vehicle-software number. HW3's presence is not evidence of full HW4 software parity The hardware split is the easiest detail to lose in fast-moving software discussion. Not a Tesla App labels the v14.3.12 driving notes HW4. Teslascope's 2026.38.5 page also contains separate FSD v14.3 Lite notes for HW3 and, at the access-time snapshot, recorded one HW3 installation in its five-car sample. These records are compatible with different driving packages sharing a vehicle-software version. The Lite description says Tesla distilled intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3 and lists changes including parking, unparking, reversing, arrival options, and speed profiles. Those details also appear in the earlier 2026.33.5 material. They should not be presented as a newly established promise that older hardware now runs the full AI4 model or matches its performance. A clear owner-facing question is therefore not simply “Did I receive 2026.38.5?” It is “Which FSD build, which hardware eligibility, and which features do my car's notes actually show?” The shared software number is useful for identifying a package, but it does not collapse the difference between inference hardware generations or regional feature permissions. The latest records do not justify either extreme of the online argument. They do not support saying this package is exclusively appearing on HW4, because the tracker records HW3 too. They also do not support saying full v14.3.12 is available on HW3. Preserving that distinction is more useful than treating every installation as a vote for one hardware narrative. Still supervised, still incomplete The v14.3.12 notes say drivers must remain attentive and that the feature does not make the vehicle autonomous. They also place broader reasoning beyond destination handling and pothole avoidance under upcoming improvements . Neither should be counted as a delivered capability on the strength of this release-note page. Why this matters beyond a version-number c