Elon Musk is praising knowledge that he claims reveals Tesla is on the verge of reaching unsupervised Full Self-Driving, when in reality, it reveals it’s nonetheless years away and he’s misrepresenting it.
It’s onerous to take Musk significantly in terms of self-driving timelines as a result of he has been so persistently unsuitable for years.
Some argue that you would be able to’t maintain that in opposition to 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 should you agree with this argument, there are clear issues with Musk’s claims relating to Tesla’s progress and timelines towards unsupervised self-driving.
The largest one is knowledge.
Tesla has persistently refused to share any knowledge relating to its self-driving progress. That’s regardless of extra just lately beginning to use “miles between needed disengagement”, generally referred to as “miles between essential disengagement”, as a metric to trace progress and claiming x multiplicators in miles between essential disengagement in latest updates with none precise knowledge to again it up.
A latest instance was Musk hyping Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software program updates 12.4 and 12.5 by claiming they’ll be capable of drive “5 to 10x extra miles per intervention“.
Once more, Tesla by no means launched any knowledge to again this up, however we now have some crowdsourced knowledge that pointed to FSD 12.5 reaching 183 miles (all variations mixed excluding testers with fewer than 50 miles) between essential disengagement. Musk by no means specified the “5 to 10x” enchancment was in comparison with what model, but when we in contrast it in opposition to the final replace, FSD 12.3, miles between essential disengagement went down from 228 miles.
There aren’t any prior variations of Tesla FSD over the past 3 years that will add as much as a 3x enchancment in miles between essential disengagement. We are able to overlook about “5 to 10x.”
Now, Tesla has upgraded to FSD v13 and Musk once more claims that it’ll “blow folks’s thoughts.”
The automaker claimed that v13 would deliver “5 to 6x improved miles between needed interventions” in comparison with v12.5.
That signifies that Tesla anticipated FSD v13 to attain between 915 and 1,098 miles between essential disengagement based mostly on the crowdsourced knowledge.
Presently, after over 8,000 miles of crowdsourced knowledge, FSD v13 is at 493 miles between essential disengagement:
That’s a 2.7x enchancment. It’s important, however it is usually a major miss in comparison with what Tesla predicted.
Now, Elon and Tesla followers like to say that this crowdsourced knowledge is flawed and that Tesla FSD is definitely performing higher.
The information is certainly restricted, however it’s the finest we now have by far since Tesla refuses to share its personal knowledge. I’ve usually fought in opposition to this accusation each as a result of it’s undoubtedly the most effective knowledge out there and since Elon Musk himself referred to this particular crowdsourced knowledge up to now.
Now, he has achieved it once more and he did it to say “exponential enchancment” in Tesla’s FSD efficiency, however it’s grossly deceptive:
This knowledge solely refers to freeway miles and Tesla has been working the identical freeway stack for years. The town driving software program stack is totally different and based mostly on “end-to-end neural nets”. The automaker stored promising to replace it, but it surely barely ever did – resulting in the stagnation you see on this chart.
Tesla labored on this replace for years, but it surely really 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 the town software program stack for the previous 2 years.
Moreover, if we are able to take this acknowledgment from Musk that this knowledge is consultant of Tesla FSD efficiency, which needs to be the case in any other case it could be enormously deceptive for him to share it, it reveals that Tesla remains to be years away from reaching unsupervised self-driving regardless of Musk saying it can occur in “q2 2025”, which is months away.
Ashok Elluswamy, the top of FSD at Tesla, has beforehand said that for Tesla to allow unsupervised self-driving, Tesla wants to attain the common in miles per essential intervention “equal of human miles between collision,” which stands at 670,000 miles, in keeping with NHTSA.
Due to this fact, based mostly on this knowledge shared by Musk, Tesla must go from 493 miles between disengegament to 670,000 miles between disengagement inside 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 important 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 might see it obtain near “690 to 828 miles between essential disengagement.”
However then I reported that v13 would end in enhancements however come wanting that purpose after v13 was delayed by a couple of months after which launched with a considerably dumb-down model.
Now, it finally ends up at 493 miles between disengagement. It is sensible. It’s a powerful enchancment, however it is usually 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 information to say Tesla has achieved exponential progress with out no proof in anyway.
He’s purposely solely freeway knowledge, 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 concept 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 favored to level out that I consider that if Tesla was creating FSD in a vacuum with out Elon Musk making claims about Tesla reaching unsupervised self-driving on x timeline, making “Tesla automobiles 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 an alternative, it’s vastly seen as a fraud by many individuals. That’s Elon Musk’s fault.
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