It's been less than a week since Tesla hosted their AI Day. This livestreamed event was full of technical jargon and meant to attract the best AI and vision engineers to work at Tesla. Elon Musk already has some hot takeaways about Full Self-Driving (FSD).
FSD Beta 9.3 was just driven from Pasadena, CA to LAX. Much improved! Elon Musk (@elonmusk), August 24, 2021
Musk tweeted Tuesday: FSD Beta 9.2 was actually not great imo. However, Autopilot/AI team are rallying to improve as quickly as possible. Although we are trying to create a single tech stack that can be used on both the highway and city streets, it will require massive [neural network] training.
This is an important point. This sentiment is shared by many others in the autonomous sector. Kodiak Robotics' co-founder and CEO Don Burnette says that his company is primarily focused on trucking at the moment, as it is a simpler problem to solve. Burnette stated in an Extra Crunch interview:
Our tech is highly customizable for a specific purpose. This is one of its unique features. It is not a constant requirement to maintain high truck highway performance and high dense urban passenger vehicle performance all within the same stack. Although it is theoretically possible to find a universal solution for all driving conditions and all forms of traffic, this is a difficult problem.
Tesla uses only optical cameras and ignores radar and lidar, so massive neural network training is not an overstatement.
We all have sympathy for the AI/vision team, who may be feeling a little bit upset by Musk's tweet. However, this moment is one of clarity and honesty for Musk. We usually filter Tesla news about its autonomy using a fine-tuned BS meter. It beeps wildly every time it mentions its Full Self-Driving tech. This is not full self-driving, but it does provide advanced driver assistance, which could be used to improve autonomy in the future.
Musk responded to the tweet with a statement that he had just driven the FSD Beta 9.3 from Pasadena, California to LAX. It was a much better ride! Should we buy it? Musk is always optimistic. Musk stated that Tesla would release new versions of its FSD every other week at midnight California Time at the beginning of the month. He promised that Beta 9.2 would not be loose, stating that the radar was holding Tesla back, and that now that it has its pure vision accepted, progress will be much quicker.
After major code releases, there is always much cleanup. Beta 9.2 will be very tight. Beta 10 still has some fundamental issues to resolve, but progress is much quicker now that it was pure vision. Radar was a major obstacle. Elon Musk (@elonmusk), July 31, 2021
Musk may be trying to distract from negative press surrounding the FSD system. U.S. regulators launched a preliminary investigation into Teslas Autopilot last week. They cited 11 incidents in which Teslas Autopilot vehicles collided with parked first response vehicles. We don't know why first responder vehicles are so important. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administrations' website, the majority of these incidents occurred after dark. Poor night vision is a problem for many human drivers. However, such incidents are not acceptable in autonomous driving.
