Tesla's solution to the problem of blaming Autopilot

There was a crash in Florida recently where a Tesla hit a stopped Florida Highway Patrol vehicle that was stopped on the side of the road. The trooper was assisting the driver of a disabled vehicle. Fortunately, the trooper wasn't in their vehicle and was uninjured. The driver of the Tesla and the driver of the disabled vehicle had minor injuries.

There have been a series of episodes in which a Tesla on Autopilot has hit a stopped emergency vehicle, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation. We Tesla drivers, at least those of us who pay attention, already know the root cause of these accidents. And there are two solutions coming down the pipeline.

The basic problem is that plain old ordinary Autopilot doesn't seem to “see” parked vehicles. We see on our center screen what our cars seem to see, Go ahead out to your car. Drive to a street where there are painted lane lines and parked cars. Engage Autopilot and drive down the street. Your car will stay in its lane, but parked cars, for the most part, won't show up on your center screen. Go ahead and do that. I'll wait...

See, most of the parked cars didn't show on your center screen. Some did, but not all of them. Now imagine what would happen if you're on a limited-access highway. There's a disabled car, and a police car stops behind it. The police car parks with its light bar flashing, and it's sticking out into the travel lane a bit to notify drivers that they need to move over to the next lane. That's the procedure for protecting the disabled car and its driver. But your Tesla, on Autopilot, is firmly glued to the center of the travel lane. Since it doesn't see the parked police car, even with the light bar flashing, the right front fender of the Tesla hits the left rear fender of the police car. Computers don't do what you want them to do. They do what they're programmed to do.

And why does this accident happen? Because most drivers don't fly planes. What? How does flying have anything to do with this? If you're a pilot, you've been taught that engaging the autopilot in a plane doesn't absolve the human pilot of any responsibility. All it does is make the job of flying the plane less labor-intensive. The pilot knows that they still need to pay attention. That message doesn't seem to have reached all Tesla drivers even though Tesla tells them that they need to keep paying attention. If the driver had been paying attention, they'd have seen the flashing lights in plenty of time to shift over manually to the next lane.

Driver Monitoring

So, what are the two solutions in the pipeline? The first solution is that Tesla software update 2021.32.5 is going to activate the little camera inside the car above the rearview mirror. It will be watching the driver's eyes. If the driver starts looking somewhere else besides the road for more than a few seconds, the car will notify the driver. If the driver doesn't start paying attention after about thirty seconds, Autopilot disengages with a loud alarm and a big red steering wheel icon on the screen. And the driver had better be ready to take over. The camera-based driver monitoring system is rolling out to radar-equipped cars.

FSD Beta

The other item coming down the pipeline is the beta version of Full Self Driving. Of course, that's only available to people who have shelled out for FSD. But if you do have it, you can see from this video that FSD beta v 9.2 does see parked cars. It still doesn't see white concrete columns that hold the Seattle monorail up, so there are improvements yet to be made.

Tesla FSD V9.2 Review & Monorail Test

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Musk Teases New Model for Early 2025 That Will Use a Mix of Next-Gen and Current Platforms

“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 on FSD: Close to License Deal With Major Automaker, Announces Miles Driven on FSD v12

On Tuesday Tesla reported its earnings results followed by a conference call that brought several updates on the company’s roadmap for future vehicles, autonomous driving, Optimus and much more.

While answering a question from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney about updates on the licensing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon Musk said they’re talking to one major auto manufacturer and there’s “a good chance” the company signs the first deal before year-end. However, he went on to say that it would probably be three years before the necessary changes are integrated into the car.

I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year

Brings Benefits to Tesla

The technology would require other automakers to start using the same cameras and hardware as Tesla, meaning that Tesla may not only generate money from licensing FSD but also from selling the hardware itself. However, there would be other benefits as well. When licensing FSD, Tesla would likely own the data gathered with the system well, further helping them with data and edge cases that need to be solved to reach full autonomy.

people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars… Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja commented pointing out that future partners “take a lot of time in their product life cycle” resulting in a gap between the deal signing and the arrival in the market of Tesla’s FSD software.

Miles Driven With FSD

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles that have been 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 will continue to increase its “core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months” adding that in the first quarter, it completed the transition to hardware 4.0 with China now receiving the upgraded FSD computer and cameras.

Over the weekend, Tesla reduced the price of FSD dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada.

Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.

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