Tesla just finished their Q2 earnings call, and CEO Elon Musk mentioned that the price of FSD Beta might be going up (again) by the end of this year.
Improved Framerate
FSD Beta has arguably gotten better over the years as Tesla has trained its neural nets and deprecated old ones. Musk stated that they will continue deleting older neural nets to improve the frame rate, which is currently 24fps. Removing the older neural nets will allegedly increase the frame rate up to 36fps.
This should allow for smoother interactions, especially when driving faster. Right now if you're driving 60 MPH, you're moving at a rate of 88 feet per second. If the car is interpreting 24fps, then it's analyzing its environment about every 3.6 feet.
Increasing the framerate to 36fps would lower this to about 2.4 feet, resulting in the vehicle having smoother reactions to its environment.
Musk explains this at the 27-minute mark in the Q2 earnings call.
FSD Beta Price Increase?
Musk has said that as it enhances its software feature set the price will continue to rise. They upped the price to $12,000 of FSD Beta earlier this year, up from $10,000, months before adding additional testers.
It’s difficult for some EV consumers to justify $12,000+ for non-physical features, which is why Tesla offers a subscription program for FSD. Musk didn’t clarify during the earnings call if the price of the subscription program would increase as well, but he did say that FSD is “currently ridiculously cheap.”
“The value of FSD is extremely high and not well understood by most people,” said Musk during the call. “It is basically currently ridiculously cheap, assuming FSD materializes, which it will.”
If Musk thinks FSD’s current price tag of $12,000 is ridiculously cheap, we can assume that FSD will most likely become quite more expensive over the next 5-10 years, especially as Tesla continues to collect more data from its fleet and add new features.
The EV automaker plans to push FSD Beta to all owners who purchased or subscribe in North America by the end of this year.
Many owners have requested that Tesla allow for the transfer of FSD and Autopilot purchases to future vehicles they purchase. All vehicles are delivered with the FSD hardware, and Tesla simply software locks them, which allows owners to buy FSD at any point after purchase.
This becomes more pressing for owners who are upgrading their vehicles.
FSD Beta Stats
Tesla also revealed how many FSD Beta testers they currently have. According to their 2022 Q2 earnings report, Tesla now has more than 100,000 drivers using FSD Beta across North America.
FSD Beta has now been driven for 35 million miles
Tesla
In the investors' report, Tesla also showed that there have now been more than 35 million miles driven with FSD Beta, more than any other automaker.
Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.
Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.
Optimus is Blind
Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.
Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.
Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.
What’s Next?
Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.
Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.
There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.
We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.
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.
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