Elon Musk is praising knowledge that he claims exhibits Tesla is on the verge of attaining unsupervised Full Self-Driving, when in actual fact, it exhibits it’s nonetheless years away and he’s misrepresenting it.
It’s arduous to take Musk severely with regards to self-driving timelines as a result of he has been so persistently mistaken for years.
Some argue that you could’t maintain that in opposition to him, although 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 necessary 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 most important one is knowledge.
Tesla has persistently refused to share any knowledge relating to its self-driving progress. That’s regardless of extra lately beginning to use “miles between crucial disengagement”, typically known as “miles between vital disengagement”, as a metric to trace progress and claiming x multiplicators in miles between vital disengagement in current updates with none precise knowledge to again it up.
A current instance was Musk hyping Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software program updates 12.4 and 12.5 by claiming they may have the ability to drive “5 to 10x extra miles per intervention“.
Once more, Tesla by no means launched any knowledge to again this up, however now we have some crowdsourced knowledge that pointed to FSD 12.5 attaining 183 miles (all variations mixed excluding testers with fewer than 50 miles) between vital 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 vital disengagement went down from 228 miles.
There are not any prior variations of Tesla FSD during the last 3 years that will add as much as a 3x enchancment in miles between vital 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 carry “5 to 6x improved miles between crucial interventions” in comparison with v12.5.
That signifies that Tesla anticipated FSD v13 to attain between 915 and 1,098 miles between vital disengagement primarily based on the crowdsourced knowledge.
At the moment, after over 8,000 miles of crowdsourced knowledge, FSD v13 is at 493 miles between vital disengagement:
That’s a 2.7x enchancment. It’s important, however it’s also a big miss in comparison with what Tesla predicted.
Now, Elon and Tesla followers like to assert that this crowdsourced knowledge is flawed and that Tesla FSD is definitely performing higher.
The info is certainly restricted, however it’s the greatest now we 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 very best knowledge out there and since Elon Musk himself referred to this particular crowdsourced knowledge prior to now.
Now, he has performed it once more and he did it to assert “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 completely different and primarily based on “end-to-end neural nets”. The automaker saved promising to replace it, nevertheless it barely ever did – resulting in the stagnation you see on this chart.
Tesla labored on this replace for years, nevertheless it truly 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 typical on freeway was already 393 miles:
That is no indication of “exponential enchancment”. It’s merely Tesla lastly releasing a protracted overdue replace to its freeway software program stack after engaged on the town software program stack for the previous 2 years.
Moreover, if we will 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 drastically deceptive for him to share it, it exhibits that Tesla remains to be years away from attaining unsupervised self-driving regardless of Musk saying it is going to occur in “q2 2025”, which is months away.
Ashok Elluswamy, the pinnacle of FSD at Tesla, has beforehand acknowledged that for Tesla to allow unsupervised self-driving, Tesla wants to attain the typical in miles per vital intervention “equal of human miles between collision,” which stands at 670,000 miles, in accordance with NHTSA.
Subsequently, primarily based 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 may see it obtain near “690 to 828 miles between vital disengagement.”
However then I reported that v13 would lead to enhancements however come wanting that aim after v13 was delayed by a number of months after which launched with a considerably dumb-down model.
Now, it finally ends up at 493 miles between disengagement. It is smart. It’s a formidable enchancment, however it’s also far wanting what Tesla mentioned would occur and nonetheless tons of of 1000’s of miles away from what Tesla itself mentioned it must be to attain unsupervised self-driving.
Not solely that, however Elon is now misrepresenting the info to assert Tesla has achieved exponential development with out no proof in anyway.
He’s purposely solely taking a look at 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 thought 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 appreciated to level out that I imagine that if Tesla was creating FSD in a vacuum with out Elon Musk making claims about Tesla attaining unsupervised self-driving on x timeline, making “Tesla autos 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 a substitute, it’s vastly seen as a fraud by many individuals. That’s Elon Musk’s fault.
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