Elon Musk is praising information that he claims exhibits Tesla is on the verge of attaining unsupervised Full Self-Driving, when the truth is, it exhibits it’s nonetheless years away and he’s misrepresenting it.
It’s arduous to take Musk significantly on the subject of self-driving timelines as a result of he has been so persistently mistaken for years.
Some argue you could’t maintain that towards him, regardless 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 troublesome and essential factor to attain.
Even if you happen to agree with this argument, there are clear issues with Musk’s claims concerning Tesla’s progress and timelines towards unsupervised self-driving.
The most important one is information.
Tesla has persistently refused to share any information concerning its self-driving progress. That’s regardless of extra lately beginning to use “miles between mandatory disengagement”, generally known as “miles between crucial disengagement”, as a metric to trace progress and claiming x multiplicators in miles between crucial 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 are going to be capable of drive “5 to 10x extra miles per intervention“.
Once more, Tesla by no means launched any information to again this up, however we have now some crowdsourced information that pointed to FSD 12.5 attaining 183 miles (all variations mixed excluding testers with fewer than 50 miles) between crucial disengagement. Musk by no means specified the “5 to 10x” enchancment was in comparison with what model, but when we in contrast it towards the final replace, FSD 12.3, miles between crucial disengagement went down from 228 miles.
There are not any prior variations of Tesla FSD during the last 3 years that will add as much as a 3x enchancment in miles between crucial disengagement. We will overlook about “5 to 10x.”
Now, Tesla has upgraded to FSD v13 and Musk once more claims that it’ll “blow individuals’s thoughts.”
The automaker claimed that v13 would carry “5 to 6x improved miles between mandatory interventions” in comparison with v12.5.
That signifies that Tesla anticipated FSD v13 to attain between 915 and 1,098 miles between crucial disengagement primarily based on the crowdsourced information.
At present, after over 8,000 miles of crowdsourced information, FSD v13 is at 493 miles between crucial disengagement:
That’s a 2.7x enchancment. It’s important, however it’s also a big miss in comparison with what Tesla predicted.
Now, Elon and Tesla followers like to assert that this crowdsourced information is flawed and that Tesla FSD is definitely performing higher.
The information is certainly restricted, however it’s the greatest we have now by far since Tesla refuses to share its personal information. I’ve usually fought towards this accusation each as a result of it’s undoubtedly the very best information out there 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 assert “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 completely different and primarily based on “end-to-end neural nets”. The automaker stored promising to replace it, however it barely ever did – resulting in the stagnation you see on this chart.
Tesla labored on this replace for years, however it truly 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 common on freeway was already 393 miles:
That is no indication of “exponential enchancment”. It’s merely Tesla lastly releasing an extended overdue replace to its freeway software program stack after engaged on town software program stack for the previous 2 years.
Moreover, if we are able to take this acknowledgment from Musk that this information is consultant of Tesla FSD efficiency, which needs to be the case in any other case it might be drastically deceptive for him to share it, it exhibits that Tesla continues to be years away from attaining unsupervised self-driving regardless of Musk saying it is going to occur in “q2 2025”, which is months away.
Ashok Elluswamy, the top of FSD at Tesla, has beforehand acknowledged that for Tesla to allow unsupervised self-driving, Tesla wants to attain the common in miles per crucial intervention “equal of human miles between collision,” which stands at 670,000 miles, based on NHTSA.
Subsequently, primarily based on this information shared by Musk, Tesla must go from 493 miles between disengegament to 670,000 miles between disengagement throughout 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 may see it obtain near “690 to 828 miles between crucial disengagement.”
However then I reported that v13 would lead to enhancements however come wanting that aim after v13 was delayed by a number of months after which launched with a considerably dumb-down model.
Now, it finally ends up at 493 miles between disengagement. It is smart. It’s a formidable enchancment, however it’s also far wanting what Tesla stated would occur and nonetheless tons of of hundreds of miles away from what Tesla itself stated it must be to attain unsupervised self-driving.
Not solely that, however Elon is now misrepresenting the info to assert Tesla has achieved exponential development with out no proof in any way.
He’s purposely solely taking a look at freeway information, which is deceptive as a result of the stack was barely up to date for years.
I believe it’s clear that Elon both lies about self-driving or he has no thought what he’s speaking about, which someway 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 consider that if Tesla was creating 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 believe that Tesla’s FSd growth can be celebrated.
As a substitute, it’s vastly seen as a fraud by many individuals. That’s Elon Musk’s fault.
FTC: We use revenue incomes auto affiliate hyperlinks. Extra.
