The Tesla Full Self-Driving crowdsourced dataset that Elon Musk has permitted has doubled for the reason that CEO shared it final month.
What does it say concerning the state of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving program now?
We’ve been complaining for years about Tesla’s lack of information on its Full Self-Driving program. In September 2024, Tesla began releasing month-to-month AI/self-driving roadmap updates and referenced enhancements in some metrics that it wouldn’t even share.
Unsurprisingly, Tesla shortly stopped releasing the month-to-month updates after lacking a number of milestones.
As a result of Tesla has not supplied knowledge, now we have to depend on a less-than-ideal however better-than-nothing crowdsourced dataset.
Tesla followers typically criticized the dataset as a result of it doesn’t make the Full Self-Driving system look nice, but it surely’s more durable to do now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has positively referenced the dataset on two events.
The final time Musk referenced the info, he misrepresented it as confirming “exponential enchancment” by singling out freeway mileage.
This was knowledge again when Musk referenced it final month:
Musk significantly praised the freeway mileage of 723 miles between disengagement, which was a giant leap over Tesla FSD v12, however we famous that this was deceptive as a result of v13 lastly merged metropolis and freeway software program stacks to incorporate end-to-end neural nets.
This had been delayed for freeway driving for years. Due to this fact, Musk was making an attempt to make this replace appear like an “exponential enchancment” when, actually, it was merely Tesla lastly utilizing years of growth in metropolis driving and transferring it to freeway driving, which was alleged to have occurred a very long time in the past.
Nevertheless, Musk’s approval of crowdsource knowledge confirms that it’s within the ballpark of what Tesla sees with FSD. In any other case, it will be extremely deceptive for him to share it positively, even when he has misrepresented it to make it look constructive.
When Musk shared the info, there have been solely 8,000 miles on the brand new FSD v13 replace. Now, the crowdsource dataset has nearly twice as many miles on Tesla FSD v13.
With extra miles, the efficiency truly went down. Miles between disengagement on freeway went from 723 to 624 miles.
Tesla’s major metric has been “miles between needed disengagement,” which is presently 489 miles.
The automaker beforehand claimed that v13 would convey “5 to 6x improved miles between needed interventions” in comparison with v12.5.
The common of all v12.5 updates is at 183 miles. Due to this fact, it’s truly nearer to a 2.7x enchancment.
The place does Tesla have to go from there?
Ashok Elluswamy, the pinnacle of FSD at Tesla, has beforehand said that for Tesla to allow unsupervised self-driving, Tesla wants to realize the typical in miles per vital intervention “equal of human miles between collision,” which stands at 700,000 miles, based on NHTSA.
Electrek’s Take
Sure, a 15,000-mile dataset is sort of restricted, however you FSD followers can’t complain since Elon bragged about it with simply 8,000 miles.
500 miles sounds about proper to me. It signifies that Tesla would wish a 1,400x enchancment to realize the extent of security it mentioned it wants to realize unsupervised self-driving.
Anybody who thinks that is taking place this 12 months is kidding themselves.
Nevertheless, I imagine that Tesla is working round that. Elon mentioned that Tesla is launching “unsupervised self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June,” and he confirmed that it is going to be carried out with “Tesla’s inside fleet.”
This implies a Waymo-style geo-fenced autonomous ride-hailing system assisted by teleoperation – aka what Elon trashed for years and mentioned that Tesla would simply surpassed with its method.
You’ll be able to deploy such a system with a lot decrease miles between disengagement. One thing like 10,000-20,000 miles is achievable, however the decrease the mileage between disengagement, the messier it is going to be.
In a restricted geo-fenced atmosphere, Tesla might presumably obtain that by June in Austin.
The factor that Tesla followers want to grasp is that it will solely imply that Tesla can be the place Waymo was years in the past. It received’t get them nearer to what Elon has been promising for years: unsupervised self-driving for the whole buyer fleet constructed since 2016.
Tesla would wish to scale like Waymo is, which Elon has been claiming shouldn’t be scalable.
