Elon Musk desires you to imagine Tesla is about to ship self-driving with none knowledge

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

Yesterday, Tesla unveiled a cool-looking automobile, the Cybercab, that’s completely reliant on making Full Self-Driving (FSD) work, which was imagined to occur yearly for the previous 5 years, in keeping 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 tip of the yr.

At one level, the CEO claimed that his inaccurate timelines have 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 may nonetheless be operating 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 comply with when it enters manufacturing in 2026 or 2027.

However once more, why ought to we imagine 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 knowledge about FSD that reveals actual progress – one thing Tesla has by no means carried out. Actually, it has by no means launched FSD knowledge past the variety of miles coated. No disengagement nor intervention knowledge.
2. A change in technique that will 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 ordinary with FSD, which presently wants a 500-1000x enchancment in miles between interventions.

The newest disengagement knowledge 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 a substitute of sharing some knowledge 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 could 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 might all be speaking otherwise about this product.

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

Now, that’s based mostly by myself expertise with the system during the last 3 years and the crowdsourced knowledge. To be truthful, the crowdsourced knowledge solely accounts for ~100,000 miles whereas Tesla has over 1.6 billion miles of knowledge, but when Tesla refuses to share that knowledge, 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 have been much less spectacular than FSD. Tesla selected the Warner Bros studio for a motive.

Whereas these roads appear 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 firms creating self-driving applied sciences are doing. Why? As a result of it will require them to share their knowledge 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, but it surely seems like Tesla had employees monitoring the demo autos and controlling their departures and arrivals.

Electrek’s Take

In brief, Tesla must launch its FSD knowledge 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 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 larger quantity transit, there’s the brand new Robovan, but it surely has the identical FSD downside as all different Tesla autos.

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 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 electronic mail. Appears to be like like Tesla needed to throw a celebration for its shareholders.