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

There was one massive 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 automobile, the Cybercab, that’s totally reliant on making Full Self-Driving (FSD) work, which was speculated to occur yearly for the previous 5 years, in line with 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 yr.

At one level, the CEO claimed that his inaccurate timelines had been as a result of reaching “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 might nonetheless be operating into native maximums.

What I wished from Tesla’s occasion yesterday was to know what makes this time completely different. Musk stated that Tesla goes to ship unsupervised self-driving on present automobiles in California and Texas subsequent yr.

Then, Cybercab will observe 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 completed. 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 a substitute, it’s enterprise as traditional with FSD, which at the moment wants a 500-1000x enchancment in miles between interventions.

The newest disengagement information crowdsourced by Tesla homeowners reveals that FSD is at the moment 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 a substitute 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 clients 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 clients for as much as $15,000, I believe we’d all be speaking in a different way about this product.

However proper now, regardless that you possibly can have a powerful 100-mile drive with out challenge on FSD, it doesn’t translate into an unsupervised self-driving system as a result of the info reveals it will probably’t do it dependable 1000’s of instances like a human might.

Now, that’s based mostly by myself expertise with the system over the past 3 years and the crowdsourced information. To be truthful, 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 significantly better than the crowdsourced dataset.

However Fred, what concerning the demonstration on the occasion?

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

Whereas these roads seem like common public roads, it’s a non-public studio set. Tesla doesn’t have to ask California for a self-driving allow to drive there. Tesla has at all times resisted testing unsupervised self-driving automobiles on California roads, one thing all different corporations growing self-driving applied sciences are doing. Why? As a result of it might require them to share their information about disengagement.

Subsequently, Tesla tuned FSD to work “unsupervised” on these non-public roads for the occasion. Additionally, I put “unsupervised” in quotes as a result of they had been unsupervised from contained in the car, but it surely seems to be like Tesla had workers monitoring the demo automobiles 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 complete factor is fairly meaningless. The Cybercab seems to be superior. I like the design.

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

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

Optimus seemed 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 no less than a sure degree of distant management.

Total the occasion was very low in particulars and new info. It might have been an e-mail. Appears to be like like Tesla wished to throw a celebration for its shareholders.