Tesla CEO Elon Musk said again Wednesday that he believes the automaker’s current hardware for its Autopilot system is sufficient for achieving full autonomy. Still, he teased that there will be “more on the hardware front soon.”
In a letter to shareholders, Tesla said Autopilot will soon experience a rapid rollout of additional functionality.
“Now that the foundation of the Tesla vision neural net is right, which was an exceptionally difficult problem, as it must fit into far less computing power than is typically used, we expect a rapid rollout of additional functionality over the next several months and are progressing rapidly towards our goal of a coast-to-coast drive with no one touching the controls.”
That dream of a vehicle with full-self-driving capability is being pursued largely through advances in artificial intelligence. According to the shareholder letter:
“The Tesla AI team, which is fundamental to achieving full autonomy, strengthened dramatically this year, with a number of the world’s best AI engineers and researchers joining our company. We plan to continue building Tesla AI until it is one of the best teams in the world, not just in automotive, where Tesla is already the leader, but across all industries. This applies to both software and hardware.”
Tesla recently appointed accomplished AI researcher Andrej Karpathy as the head of AI and Autopilot vision.
The company has yet to give a clear timeline as to when it expects to achieve full self-driving capability. Still, it sells a “Full Self-Driving” option that it will enable for purchasers once complete and regulatory compliant.
Musk noted that he’s confident full autonomy is possible with current hardware, but regulators could require a safety standard greater than “approximate human level.” He said it’s possible autonomous capability will need to be a hundred or thousand times safer than human capability to receive endorsement from regulators.
He said if regulators require a level of safety unachievable by current hardware, the company will replace onboard computers for those who have already purchased the Full Self Driving option.
“I’m certain our hardware strategy is better than any other option,” Musk said.