Elon Musk desires you to consider Tesla is about to ship self-driving with none information

There was one large factor lacking from Tesla’s autonomy occasion yesterday: information. Elon Musk desires you to consider Tesla is about to ship self-driving, however you simply need to consider him even supposing he has been fallacious about it yearly for the previous 5 years.

Yesterday, Tesla unveiled a cool-looking automotive, the Cybercab, that’s fully reliant on making Full Self-Driving (FSD) work, which was speculated to occur yearly for the previous 5 years, based on Elon Musk’s personal statements.

Yearly since 2019, Musk stated that he expects Tesla to improve its supervised FSD into an unsupervised FSD, as promised, by the top of the 12 months.

At one level, the CEO claimed that his inaccurate timelines have been because of attaining “native maximums” within the software program, which they couldn’t see till they hit these ceilings. Regardless of this downside, he retains giving new timelines and promoting the product whereas Tesla may nonetheless be operating into native maximums.

What I needed from Tesla’s occasion yesterday was to know what makes this time totally different. Musk stated that Tesla goes to ship unsupervised self-driving on present autos in California and Texas subsequent 12 months.

Then, Cybercab will comply with when it enters manufacturing in 2026 or 2027.

However once more, why ought to we consider Musk this time?

I used to be anticipating one among two issues that Tesla would announce on the occasion to construct extra confidence:

1. Tesla would share information about FSD that reveals actual progress – one thing Tesla has by no means executed. Actually, it has by no means launched FSD information past the variety of miles lined. No disengagement nor intervention information.
2. A change in technique that may contain deploying degree 4 self-driving in geo-fenced areas – a enterprise mannequin nearer to what Waymo is doing.

Tesla did neither. As an alternative, it’s enterprise as common with FSD, which presently wants a 500-1000x enchancment in miles between interventions.

The most recent disengagement information crowdsourced by Tesla house owners reveals that FSD is presently at about 123 miles between disengagement and the tempo of enchancment is way from spectacular:

Till Tesla reveals a transparent path towards 100,000+ miles between disengagmeeent, a steering wheel-less robotaxi is fairly meaningless, which explains why Tesla’s inventory is down by as a lot as 10% following the occasion.

As an alternative of sharing some information about this system, which Tesla definitely has after over 1.6 billion miles on FSD, Musk determined to once more solely reference direct private experiences that prospects have with Tesla’s Supervised FSD.

I’m not discounting that Supervised FSD will be spectacular, and if it was being developed in a vacuum with out Musk giving unreasonable timelines and promoting guarantees to prospects for as much as $15,000, I feel we might all be speaking otherwise about this product.

However proper now, regardless that you’ll be able to have a formidable 100-mile drive with out difficulty on FSD, it doesn’t translate into an unsupervised self-driving system as a result of the info reveals it could’t do it dependable 1000’s of instances like a human may.

Now, that’s based mostly by myself expertise with the system over the past 3 years and the crowdsourced information. To be honest, the crowdsourced information solely accounts for ~100,000 miles whereas Tesla has over 1.6 billion miles of knowledge, but when Tesla refuses to share that information, I’ve to imagine that it doesn’t look a lot better than the crowdsourced dataset.

However Fred, what concerning the demonstration on the occasion?

The Cybercab demos on the occasion have been much less spectacular than FSD. Tesla selected the Warner Bros studio for a motive.

Whereas these roads seem like common public roads, it’s a personal studio set. Tesla doesn’t must ask California for a self-driving allow to drive there. Tesla has all the time resisted testing unsupervised self-driving autos on California roads, one thing all different corporations creating self-driving applied sciences are doing. Why? As a result of it could require them to share their information about disengagement.

Subsequently, Tesla tuned FSD to work “unsupervised” on these personal roads for the occasion. Additionally, I put “unsupervised” in quotes as a result of they have been unsupervised from contained in the automobile, nevertheless it seems to be like Tesla had workers monitoring the demo autos and controlling their departures and arrivals.

Electrek’s Take

In brief, Tesla must launch its FSD information to indicate a transparent path towards over 100,000 miles between disengagement. In any other case, this entire factor is fairly meaningless. The Cybercab seems to be superior. I really like the design.

The truth that it solely has two seats is a bit annoying, nevertheless it’s true that 90% of rideshare rides are for 2 passengers or fewer.

For increased quantity transit, there’s the brand new Robovan, nevertheless it has the identical FSD downside as all different Tesla autos.

Optimus regarded to have had a significant enchancment, however it’s nonetheless methods from being helpful and as per many attendees, it appears possible that there was at the least a sure degree of distant management.

General the occasion was very low in particulars and new data. It may have been an e mail. Seems like Tesla needed to throw a celebration for its shareholders.