Tesla AI day was last night and most of the event was an in-depth look at how Tesla is solving FSD and all the problems their solving and methods they're using. It definitely wasn't aimed at at the casual consumer.
There was some interesting video where they showed how the integration of all the cameras could predict where other traffic is located, and do it better than the combination of a few cameras combined with radar. We had to take their word for it that the camera integration did a better job. It did look that way on the computer views. Elon also pointed out that they use the Autopilot software not only to drive the car but to predict where the other cars on the road are likely to be in the next few seconds.
Later in the show, things got more interesting. They brought out a person dressed like a robot who danced around a bit. Elon came out again and showed a plan for a human-shaped Tesla robot. He admitted that the one that had danced around the stage wasn't the actual robot, but said that's what the Tesla robot would look like. The purpose of the robot is to perform chores that humans might find boring, repetitive, or dangerous.
Elon mentioned that Teslas are basically semi-sentient robots on wheels. He said that the human-shaped Tesla bot would come out next year. The robots will be friendly and will be able to navigate a world built for humans. They will be five feet eight inches tall and weigh 125 pounds, The face will be a computer screen. The hands will look like human hands and have five fingers. The Tesla bot will be able to walk at five miles/hour. That's faster than normal human walking speed, but most people can run faster than that.
Elon casually mentioned that most people could run away from it and most likely overpower it. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but, he said, “You never know.”
So then, he said that the robots would be able to shop for people, do chores around the house, and do repetitive jobs in the workplace. He admitted that having robots available to do jobs in the workplace would be a problem unless there was a universal basic income. That got a cheer from the audience. So I guess there were lots of Andrew Yang fans in the audience.
Then the question period started. The first question was asked of Musk, did he plan to make any of his software open-source? He said that creating it cost too much to just give it away, but he'd be willing to license it to other car companies.
Another interesting question was about whether audible cues would be incorporated into the FSD computer. Elon admitted that it would be important for a fully autonomous car to hear sirens from emergency vehicles, and he said that if someone was yelling at the car from the outside, a fully autonomous car should be able to understand what was being said. It'll be interesting how Tesla plans to tackle this problem for vehicles without external microphones.
Later, someone asked if FSD would work in other countries. Elon said that they were focusing first on the US, but the point was made that driving is very similar in other countries. Elon mentioned that they use training data from fifty countries and that the prime directive of FSD is, “Don't crash.” And that's true in every country. He says that right now, the car is pretty good at not crashing. Clearly, pretty good is not good enough since the drivers still need to pay attention, but the FSD is programmed to not crash into anything on the highway even if it's something it doesn't recognize like a UFO that just crashed on the highway.
I have to mention, here, an experience I had while FSD was engaged. I was driving along a road at night, and I saw a rock in the middle of the road. It was clear that the car didn't see it, and I had to quickly steer around it because it was too late to stop by the time the rock appeared in my headlights. Now I don't have the beta version of FSD, but it's clear Tesla still has some work to do here.
Later, someone asked what will happen with FSD once hardware 4 gets into production. Elon said that hardware 3 will be able to drive much better than any human driver once the software is finished. He says that hardware 4 will come out with the Cybertruck, and it will be able to drive better than hardware 3, but that doesn't mean that hardware 3 is unable to drive. He pointed out that not every regular human driver is the best driver on the road, but that doesn't mean that the regular driver isn't allowed to drive.
An amusing question got asked about whether the car could be spoofed by a picture. Elon suggested that he doesn't see many paintings of tunnels on rock walls as in Wiley E. Coyote cartoons. He mentioned that he has a T-shirt with a stop sign on the front. He says that if someone flashes a Tesla with such a T-shirt, the car will stop, but that Tesla will soon train edge cases like these and the car will learn what is a real stop sign versus a fake one.
Toward the end, someone asked whether we should worry that AI will have its own priorities that might be different from the priorities of the owners of the artificially intelligent robots. Elon said that right now, we're not anywhere near the kind of self-aware super-intelligent robots that people worry about. A car may be able to drive better than most humans. A robot may be able to do boring, repetitive or dangerous activities. That doesn't mean that cars and robots might rise up and rebel against humans. He's going to program his cars and his robots to be “Unequivocally good.”
Elon's final comment about cars was that eventually, cars will drive themselves just like elevators now drive themselves. You get in an elevator, press a button, and it takes you where you want to go. There aren't elevator operators anymore. Eventually, self-driving cars will be the norm. He says that there will still be a few gasoline cars and cars that need to be driven by a human being, just like now, there are still a few horses. But non-self-driving cars will be rare.
In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.
GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.
End of Cruise
GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.
Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.
Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019.
Competition is Killer
Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.
Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.
GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy
As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.
NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.
“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3
With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.
In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection.
The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.
Others Impressed - Licensing FSD
Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next.
BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!
Not a Tesla App
It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.
There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.
One of the big undocumented changes in Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update was the changes to the Energy app. While the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck received the Consumption tab in the Energy app for the first time, the changes made for those models also carried over to Model 3 and Model Y.
The Consumption tab lets you view your vehicle’s consumption over recent trips as well as view projected range estimates based on historical usage, but it now offers different options.
Sadly, legacy Model S and Model X vehicles produced before the 2021 refresh still don’t have access to the Energy app at this time.
Energy App
Tesla’s Energy App previously let you view a lot of in-vehicle data on what is consuming energy and how to improve your energy consumption. It was previously refreshed in 2022 and brought Drive, Park, and Consumption tabs to help compare actual vehicle energy consumption versus what you’d expect from the EPA ratings.
The old Energy App's consumption page.
Not a Tesla App
Key Changes
The Energy App has seen a lot of changes - mostly in the name of simplicity and reducing confusion. Some changes reduce functionality, but others bring even more. All of these changes impact the Consumption tab - the Park and Drive sections are unchanged.
Distance
Previously, you were able to switch the graph on the Consumption tab to show the last 5, 15, or 30 miles. Instead, it is now a static display of the last 200 miles (or 300km). This means your last 200 miles of driving - whether it's a single trip or multiple trips. Your range prediction and energy usage are now based on 200 miles of driving instead of the previous selectable distance.
This allows for a more reasonable range prediction as small bursts of high-energy usage, such as time spent accelerating to highway speeds from an offramp, are now less of an impact and are instead averaged out by regular driving.
However, for those who love to take their Teslas to the track or tow regularly, this makes the consumption significantly less useful because you can no longer see your actual energy usage for the type of driving you’re doing. This could be fixed with a reset button or by adding the ability to select your distance — similar to before.
Projected Range and Average Wh/mi
Unfortunatley, the Instant Range button has been removed, and the graph is now locked on what was previously the Average Range. Essentially, you cannot view your real-time range based on current instantaneous consumption - but you can view the overall projected range.
Additionally, average Wh/mi and projected range are still displayed - but in different areas compared to before. The projected range is displayed on the center-left side of the graph, while the average Wh/mi is now displayed at the top of the screen.
Not a Tesla App
Compare Vs EPA
Another new feature is that the average range is now compared to the EPA estimated range in terms of wh/mi. You’ll be able to see whether your driving style and conditions put you over or under the EPA estimate in a pretty quick way, which is helpful.
This new comparison is located just under your average Wh/mi.
Small and minor adjustments to your driving style - like not taking off like an electric lightning bolt at every red light - will make a big difference to your range. Don’t worry - we know its hard, we love doing it too! Other things - such as driving downhill versus uphill, will have an impact that you can’t necessarily avoid unless you’re old enough that you went to school uphill both ways.
Color Changes / Regenerative Braking
In the previous Consumption view, energy used would be displayed in yellow, while energy gained through regenerative braking would be displayed in green. However, with this update, that has now changed. Anything below the vehicle’s rated range (the thicker horizontal line on the graph, will now be displayed in green, while any consumption above the vehicle’s EPA rating will now be displayed in yellow.
While this better matches the Drive tab of the Energy app, it now makes it much harder to view any energy gained via regenerative braking. Due to the long timeline (200 miles versus as short as 5 miles before), it’s now difficult to find any areas of regen since they’d be a smaller segment on the graph and are likely to be averaged out with regular driving.
The consistency of colors between the Drive and Consumption tabs is nice, but we’d still love a user-selectable distance for the x-axis and possibly a different color for regenerative braking.
Update: We’ve recently added this section to clarify that the y-axis is not mislabeled but that green now means better than expected efficiency instead of regen use.
Total Vehicle Consumption
The final new feature is a total vehicle consumption number at the bottom left, under the chart. It will tell you how much energy you’ve consumed over the distance you’ve driven so far. This is a convenient way of seeing exactly how much energy you’ve used.
Dynamic Y-Axis
The Y-axis in the Consumption tab is now dynamic—it expands and contracts automatically based on the driving data. We’ve seen it go from 400 Wh/mi to 800 Wh/mi. You likely need to be in a Model S Plaid or Cyberbeast with Launch Mode to see numbers much higher than that.
We’re sad to see the X-axis locked to 200 miles, but seeing total vehicle consumption and comparing average consumption against the rating is equally, if not even more, valuable.
Overall, the new and improved Consumption tab is simpler and doesn’t require user input. While it takes away some features, it makes it easier for drivers who may not use it regularly. The most important piece is the projected range, which is now easier to see and understand unless you're towing and need the historical usage erased because it’s now irrelevant to your current drive. Hopefully, Tesla will allow you to scrub the graph horizontally in the future, adding the ability for the user to adjust the X-axis dynamically.
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