This was an email about a conversation that the California DMV had with the engineers who are creating the software for Full Self Driving at Tesla. The email was dated March 9th about a phone conversation that had just been held.
Tesla said that there were currently 824 vehicles in the program, 753 employees and 71 nonemployees. The plan was to expand the number of beta testers to approximately 1600 people.
The DMV asked about how Tesla communicated with each potential beta tester. For the first 824 people, they called each one individually and discussed the capabilities and limitations of the system, and they got informed consent. Tesla said they were working on a video for new participants, and they promised to share the video with the DMV.
The DMV asked about the “Button” that Musk promised in a tweet. The engineers couldn’t comment on the “Button.” DMV asked about how additional participants would be selected, and the engineers said they would include referrals from current beta testers, and that they’d be vetted by checking on the auto insurance claims of potential new beta testers.
So when Elon Musk tweeted that FSD had no accidents yet, he was referring to a group of drivers that had been selected for safe driving histories.
DMV asked how beta testers sent feedback to Tesla, and, no surprise, they sent feedback by email or snail mail. Instances, when the FSD was overridden by the driver, were sent back to Tesla along with a video feed so that software engineers and the neural network could make improvements in the next iteration of the beta FSD software.
Then DMV asked Tesla about Elon Musk’s tweet that FSD would be at level 5 by the end of the calendar year. The engineers really tried to be supportive of their boss. They said he was extrapolating based on the amount of improvement they’d seen so far. But they said that the beta FSD is still firmly in level 2. The driver must be constantly involved in the driving process and must be ready at any second to take control. Their criterion for going to level five, full vehicle autonomy, would be one driver interaction with the system every one to two million miles. The engineers that are actually working on the system are not as confident about achieving level five autonomy this year as Elon is.
The engineers told DMV that they test the software by driving with it. They would know when a new release is going up a level. Right now, even the beta FSD is still in level 2. That means that the car can steer, accelerate and decelerate, start and stop, but human control could be required at any time.
Level 3 would mean that the car could drive itself most of the time, but the human would have to be alert for needed intervention. Level 4 would mean that the car drives itself all the time within certain areas and on certain types of roads.
Level 5 would mean that there would be no need for human controls because the car could go anywhere safely without any human supervision. Presumably, a level 5 autonomous car could drop its passengers off at their destination and then find a place to legally park. It would have to be able to read parking rule signs, and it would have to be able to pay for parking if paid parking was all that was available.
So my assessment of this information is that we can’t expect level five autonomy this year, but we can expect a wider availability of the beta version of FSD. But not everyone will get the “Button.” Tesla will check your driving record because, sadly, there are people who drive Teslas without paying attention even now, when even the beta FSD is still in level 2, not autonomous at all.
Tesla has invested billions of dollars over the years toward vehicle autonomy. The mission continues as Elon Musk and Tesla now prepare to unveil their ride-hailing product, Robotaxi this August. Or, as Musk called it on Tuesday, Tesla CyberCab.
Early Days
Five years ago, during Tesla’s Autonomy Investor Day in April 2019, Elon Musk said he felt “very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla in the following year [2020]”. At the time, Musk added a bolder claim, predicting that Tesla wouldn’t even make cars with steering wheels or pedals by 2022. While timeliness may not be Musk’s strong suit, he has a track record for getting things done that others were unwilling to try or thought were impossible. Musk later admitted he can be overly optimistic and said “sometimes I am not on time, but I get it done.”
Now, 5 years later, we have the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August 8th. After the release of FSD v12, it’s clear that we’re much closer to autonomy than we were in 2019, although FSD v12 is still a far cry from full autonomy.
While Tesla still has the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August, Tesla announced yesterday that it’d be prioritizing a simpler “next-gen” model that could be released by early 2025.
Latest Updates
On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.
Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.
think of it [Tesla] as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates
Tesla = Uber + AirBnb
Later on, Elon Musk unveiled that the new service will operate and result in a mix between Uber and Airbnb where the Tesla driver decides if and when he wants his Tesla to be used and by whom. Tesla stated:
“We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App.”
Tesla’s CEO clarified that the owners will be able to add or remove their car from the fleet “whenever they want” adding that it will be up to them to decide if they want to only let the car be used “by friends and family or only by five-star users or by anyone at any time”. The flexible program will, just like Airbnb, allow the owners to take the car out of the market when they want.
The upcoming ride-hailing service will enable users to easily request a Tesla vehicle, control the car's temperature, monitor its real-time location, and adjust the audio system. The only question is when.
“We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025”. This was one of the key sentences that were part of Tesla’s deck shared on Tuesday directly before its financial results.
Since Reuters’ report a few weeks ago saying Tesla had “scrapped” the highly expected cheaper model— which Elon quickly denied on X —retail and institutional shareholders started asking for more details on Tesla’s product roadmap for 2024 and beyond.
In the earnings conference call, Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla expects to launch the next model in “early 2025, if not late this year”.
“We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. “
Over concerns of temporary production halts to update the factories for these new models, Musk said that Tesla will produce new models with certain aspects from their next-generation platform and current models. This will reduce the number of changes needed on production lines and allow Tesla not only to ramp up production faster but also to get the vehicles to market quicker.
Model Y Redesign
Tesla appears to hit that their next-gen vehicle will be less “next-gen” than they were initially aiming for, but to get a new vehicle out the door by late 2024, the process would already have to be in motion. Tesla may likely be referring to the redesigned Model Y, which is expected to reuse many parts from the new Model 3. Earlier this year, Tesla said that the redesigned Model Y will not be released this year, so it makes sense that they’re looking to speed up that production.
Tesla CEO concluded by saying that these measures will allow Tesla to reach a capacity of over 3 million units. Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles in 2023. However, this year they’re ramping up Cybertruck production and introduced the new Model 3 into new markets.
And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.
Tesla reported on Tuesday its earnings results followed by a conference call where it teased its upcoming Robotaxi and its next-generation platform saying its “purpose-built Robotaxi product will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy”.
Earlier in the day, Tesla announced the new Performance variant of its sedan Model 3 with deliveries in the United States starting already next month. The new version starts at $45,490 (after applying the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit) and goes from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds.
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![Tesla's Hidden 'Elon Mode' Unveiled: A Sneak Peek into the Future of FSD [Video]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/images/news/2022/fsd-beta-inside_300w.jpg)
