Ok here is the full context of the quote that
@Bladerskb posted from the earnings call today. There is actually a lot of information in Elon's answer. I painstakingly transcribed the entire audio manually:
Question: Can you please share an update on FSD and the Tesla Network development? When will customers start to see FSD features? What's the best case timeline for the Tesla Network to go live?
Elon: Sure. We already have FSD capability on highways so from highway on ramp to highway exiting, including passing cars, and from one highway interchange to another, FSD capability is there. In a few weeks we will be pushing an update that will allow the option of removing stalk confirm in markets where regulators approve it which I believe will be the case in the US for example and over time, I believe all regulators will approve it. But we kept stalk confirm just to make sure we took care of any strange corner cases. It's really quite sublime, you have stalk confirm off and, like, the car goes from highway on ramp to passing slower cars, takes an interchange then takes an exit and comes to a stop after the exit. So, it's actually quite profound to have that experience.
The next part of FSD will really be.. is traffic lights. It's hard. [garbled] streets is pretty easy. You can essentially geocurve[?] those and easily recognize stop signs. Traffic lights and intersections will be the next really tricky one and then navigating complex parking lots. Like if you are underground in a mall parking with a lot of traffic and pedestrians and it's on multiple levels. That sort of thing is where it gets tricky. With the release of enhanced or advanced summon, you will see the first indications of the car being able to navigate complex parking lots. And that is also coming out fairly soon, probably next month. And in development mode, the car does all the things I just mentioned, recognizes traffic lights, stop signs and all the functionality in development mode. It's really just about getting the reliability of recognizing traffic lights to several 9's. It's like maybe 98% good right now but we need to be 99.999%, really extremely reliable. When do we think it will safe for FSD? Probably by the end of this year and then it will be up to regulators to decide when they want to approve us.
Ok here is my answer to your question
@Bladerskb . It appears that Elon considers NOA, either now or the version that will go out with no stalk confirm, to be FSD on highways because it can do the functions required to navigate a highway without driver input (ie take a highway ramp, pass a car, take an exit). I do not agree that NOA now is FSD. So no, I cannot defend that statement from Elon.
However, if NOA in a future update with no stalk confirm can do what Elon describes (ie drive on the highway, pass cars, take exits etc) reliably without any driver intervention or nags, then I would consider that to be highway self-driving.
A few extra observations. Based on Elon's answer, it appears advanced summon should come out soon (he says probably next month but it might be a few months from now). And it looks like advanced summon should give us better self-parking since he hints that advanced summon will do better in parking lots. it also appears that Tesla's alpha development has reached a rough FSD. It can self-drive on local streets and handle intersections and stop signs and traffic lights but not good enough yet. I think Elon is most likely overly optimistic when he says that Tesla will consider its FSD to be safe by the end of the year.
The good news (I am the optimist) is that if the development cars can obey traffic lights and stop signs now then perhaps we will get an update to EAP that can do those two things maybe sometime next year?
It also seems like Musk is taking a simplistic view to what FSD is. Basically, he is looking at the basic driving capabilities that FSD needs to do. So for highway driving, the car needs to stay in the lane, slow with traffic, pass slow traffic, change lanes for a highway change, take an on ramp and take an exit. NOA can technically do all these things so Musk goes "check, we achieved highway FSD". And Musk then looks at what FSD needs to be able to on surface streets. A car needs to stop at stop signs, obey traffic lights, navigate intersections, navigate parking lots. Musk goes "our development cars can do all these things but not reliably so check, we got FSD, we just need to improve reliability and we will be good for regulators."
