Elon Musk needs you to imagine 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 imagine Tesla is about to ship self-driving, however you simply need to imagine him even though he has been flawed about it yearly for the previous 5 years.

Yesterday, Tesla unveiled a cool-looking automotive, the Cybercab, that’s solely 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 tip of the 12 months.

At one level, the CEO claimed that his inaccurate timelines have been because 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 may nonetheless be working into native maximums.

What I needed from Tesla’s occasion yesterday was to know what makes this time totally different. Musk mentioned that Tesla goes to ship unsupervised self-driving on present autos in California and Texas subsequent 12 months.

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 considered one 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 performed. Actually, it has by no means launched FSD information past the variety of miles coated. 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 typical with FSD, which at present wants a 500-1000x enchancment in miles between interventions.

The newest disengagement information crowdsourced by Tesla house owners reveals that FSD is at present 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 may 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 believe we’d all be speaking in a different way about this product.

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

Now, that’s based mostly alone expertise with the system during the last 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 have been much less spectacular than FSD. Tesla selected the Warner Bros studio for a motive.

Whereas these roads seem 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 autos on California roads, one thing all different firms growing 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 have been unsupervised from contained in the car, nevertheless it appears like Tesla had employees monitoring the demo autos and controlling their departures and arrivals.

Electrek’s Take

Briefly, 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 appears 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 larger quantity transit, there’s the brand new Robovan, nevertheless it has the identical FSD drawback as all different Tesla autos.

Optimus regarded 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 a minimum of a sure stage of distant management.

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