Elon Musk is praising information that he claims reveals Tesla is on the verge of attaining unsupervised Full Self-Driving, when in truth, it reveals it’s nonetheless years away and he’s misrepresenting it.
It’s exhausting to take Musk critically with regards to self-driving timelines as a result of he has been so persistently flawed for years.
Some argue that you could’t maintain that in opposition to him, despite the fact that he makes use of his claims to promote automobiles and promote “Full Self-Driving” packages for as much as $15,000, as a result of it’s such a tough and necessary factor to attain.
Even should you agree with this argument, there are clear issues with Musk’s claims relating to Tesla’s progress and timelines towards unsupervised self-driving.
The largest one is information.
Tesla has persistently refused to share any information relating to its self-driving progress. That’s regardless of extra just lately beginning to use “miles between obligatory disengagement”, generally referred to as “miles between vital disengagement”, as a metric to trace progress and claiming x multiplicators in miles between vital disengagement in current updates with none precise information to again it up.
A current instance was Musk hyping Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software program updates 12.4 and 12.5 by claiming they may be capable to drive “5 to 10x extra miles per intervention“.
Once more, Tesla by no means launched any information to again this up, however we’ve got some crowdsourced information that pointed to FSD 12.5 attaining 183 miles (all variations mixed excluding testers with fewer than 50 miles) between vital disengagement. Musk by no means specified the “5 to 10x” enchancment was in comparison with what model, but when we in contrast it in opposition to the final replace, FSD 12.3, miles between vital disengagement went down from 228 miles.
There aren’t any prior variations of Tesla FSD over the past 3 years that will add as much as a 3x enchancment in miles between vital disengagement. We are able to overlook about “5 to 10x.”
Now, Tesla has upgraded to FSD v13 and Musk once more claims that it’s going to “blow folks’s thoughts.”
The automaker claimed that v13 would deliver “5 to 6x improved miles between obligatory interventions” in comparison with v12.5.
That signifies that Tesla anticipated FSD v13 to attain between 915 and 1,098 miles between vital disengagement primarily based on the crowdsourced information.
Presently, after over 8,000 miles of crowdsourced information, FSD v13 is at 493 miles between vital disengagement:
That’s a 2.7x enchancment. It’s vital, however additionally it is a big miss in comparison with what Tesla predicted.
Now, Elon and Tesla followers like to say that this crowdsourced information is flawed and that Tesla FSD is definitely performing higher.
The information is certainly restricted, however it’s the finest we’ve got by far since Tesla refuses to share its personal information. I’ve usually fought in opposition to this accusation each as a result of it’s undoubtedly one of the best information accessible and since Elon Musk himself referred to this particular crowdsourced information up to now.
Now, he has finished it once more and he did it to say “exponential enchancment” in Tesla’s FSD efficiency, however it’s grossly deceptive:
This information solely refers to freeway miles and Tesla has been working the identical freeway stack for years. The town driving software program stack is totally different and primarily based on “end-to-end neural nets”. The automaker saved promising to replace it, nevertheless it barely ever did – resulting in the stagnation you see on this chart.
Tesla labored on this replace for years, nevertheless it really wasn’t launched in v13. It got here in v12.5.6.1. If we take all of the v12 updates after this one, the typical on freeway was already 393 miles:
That is no indication of “exponential enchancment”. It’s merely Tesla lastly releasing a protracted overdue replace to its freeway software program stack after engaged on town software program stack for the previous 2 years.
Moreover, if we will take this acknowledgment from Musk that this information is consultant of Tesla FSD efficiency, which must be the case in any other case it will be tremendously deceptive for him to share it, it reveals that Tesla continues to be years away from attaining unsupervised self-driving regardless of Musk saying it’s going to occur in “q2 2025”, which is months away.
Ashok Elluswamy, the pinnacle of FSD at Tesla, has beforehand said that for Tesla to allow unsupervised self-driving, Tesla wants to attain the typical in miles per vital intervention “equal of human miles between collision,” which stands at 670,000 miles, in line with NHTSA.
Subsequently, primarily based on this information shared by Musk, Tesla must go from 493 miles between disengegament to 670,000 miles between disengagement inside the subsequent 5 months.
Electrek’s Take
I’m no hater. I’m a realist. With out patting myself an excessive amount of on the again, it’s a must to give me some credit score for predicting this with v13. After Tesla’s AI workforce launched the deliberate enhancements coming with v13, I reported that I might see it obtain near “690 to 828 miles between vital disengagement.”
However then I reported that v13 would lead to enhancements however come wanting that purpose after v13 was delayed by just a few months after which launched with a considerably dumb-down model.
Now, it finally ends up at 493 miles between disengagement. It is sensible. It’s a formidable enchancment, however additionally it is far wanting what Tesla mentioned would occur and nonetheless a whole bunch of hundreds of miles away from what Tesla itself mentioned it must be to attain unsupervised self-driving.
Not solely that, however Elon is now misrepresenting the information to say Tesla has achieved exponential progress with out no proof by any means.
He’s purposely solely freeway information, which is deceptive as a result of the stack was barely up to date for years.
I feel it’s clear that Elon both lies about self-driving or he has no concept what he’s speaking about, which in some way doesn’t cease him from confidently making statements that occur to assist Tesla promote automobiles. It’s not suspicious in any respect.
Once more, I appreciated to level out that I imagine that if Tesla was growing FSD in a vacuum with out Elon Musk making claims about Tesla attaining unsupervised self-driving on x timeline, making “Tesla autos appreciating property”, after which utilizing this to promote automobiles and $15,000 self-driving packages, I feel that Tesla’s FSd improvement could be celebrated.
As a substitute, it’s vastly seen as a fraud by many individuals. That’s Elon Musk’s fault.
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