Elon Musk needs 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 needs you to consider Tesla is about to ship self-driving, however you simply should consider him even though he has been improper 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 alleged to occur yearly for the previous 5 years, in accordance with Elon Musk’s personal statements.

Yearly since 2019, Musk mentioned 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 resulting from reaching “native maximums” within the software program, which they couldn’t see till they hit these ceilings. Regardless of this drawback, he retains giving new timelines and promoting the product whereas Tesla may nonetheless be working into native maximums.

What I needed from Tesla’s occasion yesterday was to know what makes this time completely different. Musk mentioned that Tesla goes to ship unsupervised self-driving on present autos 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 in every of 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 will contain deploying stage 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 ordinary 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 an alternative of sharing some information about this system, which Tesla actually 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 feel we’d all be speaking in a different way about this product.

However proper now, despite the fact that you possibly can have a powerful 100-mile drive with out situation on FSD, it doesn’t translate into an unsupervised self-driving system as a result of the information reveals it could’t do it dependable 1000’s of instances like a human may.

Now, that’s primarily based 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 a lot better than the crowdsourced dataset.

However Fred, what in regards to 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 appear like common public roads, it’s a non-public studio set. Tesla doesn’t must ask California for a self-driving allow to drive there. Tesla has at all times 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 will require them to share their information about disengagement.

Due to this fact, 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 automobile, nevertheless it seems to be like Tesla had employees monitoring the demo autos and controlling their departures and arrivals.

Electrek’s Take

In brief, Tesla must launch its FSD information to point out 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 greater quantity transit, there’s the brand new Robovan, nevertheless it has the identical FSD drawback as all different Tesla autos.

Optimus appeared 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 stage of distant management.

Total the occasion was very low in particulars and new data. It may have been an electronic mail. Appears to be like like Tesla needed to throw a celebration for its shareholders.