The language Elon Musk used about Tesla’s self-driving effort is changing, and it’s blurring the timeline for the automaker to deliver on its promise.
Musk used to make statements that made him extremely confident Tesla could soon deliver an autonomous driving system and virtually every vehicle the automaker has produced since 2016 with a software update.
On Tesla’s Autonomy Day in 2019, he made so many comments promising Tesla would achieve full self-driving capabilities that we were able to produce a three-minute straight video of Musk promising Tesla to provide a self-driving system:
As you can see in this video, Musk was talking about “robotaxis” and “not having to touch the steering wheel” or even not having to “look out the window” at the time.
He was also talking about Tesla providing these capabilities in 2020.
Two years later, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Capability, or FSD, is still in beta – it requires the driver to be attentive at all times, and system disengagements are quite frequent.
Not only is Tesla behind Musk’s schedule to deliver the system, but now Musk has changed the goalpost lately.
The CEO has already stopped talking about the biggest promises, like “1 million robotaxis by the end of the year”. Instead, he talked about a larger version of Tesla’s beta FSD, which again is extremely far from a robotic taxi service.
Now, on a conference call following the release of Tesla’s third quarter 2022 financial results, Musk is once again much more cautious about the language he uses around Tesla’s self-driving effort.
He again talked about a larger version of FSD Beta:
This quarter, we expect a wide release of the fully autonomous driving beta in North America. So anyone who ordered a Full Self-Driving package will have access to the FSD beta program this year, probably in a month or so.
But where things got complicated was when an analyst directly asked Musk when would Tesla provide a Level 4 or 5 autonomous driving system. These are the levels where drivers don’t have to. Warning.
Musk’s response was vague, to say the least, and the comment was much weaker than his previous promises:
Well, there’s this debate about response per mile and maybe security response per mile. Like we’re not saying it’s quite ready to have no one behind the wheel. It’s just that you almost never have to touch the control, the vehicle controllers. So like when I arrived at Giga Texas from a friend’s house today, I never touched any of the controls already here.
And then there’s a longer process called walking the 9s, which is how many 9s of reliability do you need before you can really be comfortable saying the car can drive without anyone on board ? And there is some subjectivity as to how many 9s you need. But I think we’ll be close to having enough 9s that there’s no one in the car by the end of the year. And certainly, without a doubt, that’s on my mind next year.
The CEO then added that Tesla plans to have an FSD update next year that will be used to “show regulators that the car is safer than the average human.”
Electrek’s Grasp
Musk is obviously more careful with his choice of words, but he’s still talking about Tesla hitting Tier 4 or 5 next year.
The most frustrating part is that he obviously doesn’t have much credibility anymore when it comes to this timeline, but he still backs up this prediction by saying “just look at the performance of the Tesla FSD beta”.
My experience with FSD Beta certainly doesn’t suggest this, but some have had better experiences, especially in California where there are more owners training the system.
However, speaking to the most unbiased FSD beta testers, I struggled to see a clear path for Tesla to reach Level 4 or 5 autonomy within the next year.
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