Elon Confirms Tesla Will Add Birds-Eye View in Vector-Space

Elon Musk says Tesla will add a vector-space birds-eye view in future update

Not a Tesla App

A helpful feature luxury and even more affordable cars have had for a few years now is “birds-eye view” parking. When the feature is in use, it displays the car on-screen from an overhead perspective in its surroundings, giving you the ability the easily see how close you are to other cars or the curb when parking.

It’s really a somewhat magical feature and a great feature to show off to family and friends. Although Teslas are littered with cameras on all sides, they unfortunately aren’t all facing the right way in order to pull off a feature like this. There are some crucial areas that are missed such as the lower front.

Another reason Tesla hasn’t tried to implement such a feature is that it’s currently under a patent and they would have to license the technology in order to implement it in a similar way. Although it looks like Tesla has figured out a compromise to give customers a very similar feature.

We should have seen this one coming. If you have a Tesla with FSD hardware version 3.0, then you have slowly been seeing Tesla rendering more and more items on the screen. They will now render stop signs, speed limit signs and other traffic control signs, trash cans, cones, traffic lights, different types of vehicles, line markings and quite a bit more. It’s only a matter of time before what Tesla is rendering on the screen becomes a close approximation to the real world. In fact, their whole goal of FSD relies on them achieving this.

Well according to this Elon tweet, this is exactly how Tesla plans to achieve Birds-Eye View without infringing on any patents. When the driver shifts the car into reverse, the car visualization will essentially rotate to have a top-down view, much like we see when setting the car into park. This isn’t exactly what Birds-Eye View does in other vehicles, as those provide real-time camera feeds to show the car’s surroundings, but it will be a vector-space 3D model of Birds-Eye View if you will, which will hopefully be just as helpful.

Elon has also said that this feature will be tied to FSD since it will only be available due to the work that has gone into FSD. However I would not be surprised if Tesla changes their stance on this as many may consider Birds-Eye View a safety feature which Tesla has always included in every car.

Vector-space bird’s eye view coming with FSD

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2020

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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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