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 must imagine him although he has been incorrect 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 imagined 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 tip of the yr.

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

What I needed from Tesla’s occasion yesterday was to know what makes this time totally 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 imagine Musk this time?

I used to be anticipating certainly one of two issues that Tesla would announce on the occasion to construct extra confidence:

1. Tesla would share knowledge about FSD that exhibits actual progress – one thing Tesla has by no means finished. 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 may 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 present wants a 500-1000x enchancment in miles between interventions.

The most recent disengagement knowledge crowdsourced by Tesla homeowners exhibits that FSD is at present at about 123 miles between disengagement and the tempo of enchancment is much from spectacular:

Till Tesla exhibits 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 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 prospects 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 prospects for as much as $15,000, I feel we’d all be speaking otherwise about this product.

However proper now, though you may 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 info exhibits it will probably’t do it dependable hundreds of occasions like a human might.

Now, that’s primarily based by myself expertise with the system over the past 3 years and the crowdsourced knowledge. To be honest, the crowdsourced knowledge solely accounts for ~100,000 miles whereas Tesla has over 1.6 billion miles of information, 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 in regards to 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 have to ask California for a self-driving allow to drive there. Tesla has all the time resisted testing unsupervised self-driving automobiles 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, nevertheless it appears like Tesla had employees monitoring the demo automobiles and controlling their departures and arrivals.

Electrek’s Take

Briefly, Tesla must launch its FSD knowledge to indicate a transparent path towards over 100,000 miles between disengagement. In any other case, this entire factor is fairly meaningless. The Cybercab appears superior. I 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 increased quantity transit, there’s the brand new Robovan, nevertheless it has the identical FSD drawback 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 doubtless that there was at the least a sure stage of distant management.

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