Blog Musk Touts ‘Quantum Leap” in Full Self-Driving Performance

A “quantum leap” improvement is coming to Tesla’s Autopilot software in six to 10 weeks, Chief Executive Elon Musk said a tweet.

Musk called the new software a “fundamental architectural rewrite, not an incremental tweak.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1294374864657162240

Musk said his personal car is running a “bleeding edge alpha build” of the software, which he also mentioned during Tesla’s Q2 earnings. 

“So it’s almost getting to the point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations,” Musk said on the earnings call. “So this is why I am very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year, is because I’m literally driving it.”

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software has been slow to roll out against the company’s promises. Musk previously said a Tesla would drive from Los Angeles to New York using the Full Self Driving feature by the end of 2019. The company didn’t meet that goal. So, it will be interesting to see the state of Autopilot at the end of 2020.

 

[emmz0r]

Elon keeps talking about how he gets to use the bleeding edge of the FSD development software, so why not give us a sneak peak? I guess we have to wait for Early Access to leak a preview.

Whatever happened to the beta testing for the people who paid in full for FSD were promised.
Also - as I mentioned in my own thread, they can enable all of this as level 2.

 

[DanCar]

Whatever happened to the beta testing for the people who paid in full for FSD were promised.
Also - as I mentioned in my own thread, they can enable all of this as level 2.

That happens after the NDA testers, which Elon calls private testers.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Tesla is trying to solve the general case before moving on to the more complicated corner cases. Makes sense (haha pun) to me, even though I don't 100% agree with it.

The only problem is that they've ignored the corner cases (which is the hard part, where you might well need adequate sensors)!

Oh well, time will tell. I don't see how they can get it to work with the current sensor suite, but I guess we'll all find out in the 18 months or so (I think that should be sufficient time to allow for capitulation).

 

[Mardak]

Elon keeps talking about how he gets to use the bleeding edge of the FSD development software, so why not give us a sneak peak?

Well, in some sense, the sneak peek is what they showed on Autonomy day in 2019 or even their video from 2016. But yeah, what is Tesla waiting for to release wider and/or what are they still working on?

One guess is safety/reliability but then again, we saw how smart summon was released around this time last year. And if Tesla is needing to collect more data, is it blocked on the fleet finding enough of those examples vs vetting/labeling potential training data vs identifying a new detection task is needed for some corner case?

I suppose a similar question is if Elon Musk expected pre-rewrite to be FSD feature complete by end of last year, did they realize the local maxima could only achieve say… correctly turning through 30% of intersections? And maybe the rewrite is currently 60%? And Tesla is aiming for at least 90% before private beta?

 

[diplomat33]

I suppose a similar question is if Elon Musk expected pre-rewrite to be FSD feature complete by end of last year, did they realize the local maxima could only achieve say… correctly turning through 30% of intersections? And maybe the rewrite is currently 60%? And Tesla is aiming for at least 90% before private beta?

I think this makes sense. Yeah, I suspect Tesla is waiting until the rewrite can handle a higher % of intersections before releasing it to the fleet because they want it to be more useful to Tesla owners. But it still does not explain why Tesla would not put out a little video just to show what it can do in order to give us an idea of their progress. Even if the feature is not ready for wide release, I think it would still excite a lot of Tesla owners to see what features Tesla is working on.

 

[cucubits]

But it still does not explain why Tesla would not put out a little video just to show what it can do in order to give us an idea of their progress

There's a simple answer for that but many won't like it...

I'm concerned about this "rewrite" hype too. I just hope they don't mess up AP more than it is currently...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I just hope they don't mess up AP more than it is currently...

I for one wouldn’t mind it being ripped up. It is not really very useful as it is. Great for long trips as long as my wife is not in the car, but pretty useless for everything else if there is any traffic around. May as well drive myself - it is a lot less stressful, and there is less jerking around and randomly slowing down for mild curves and dark pavement on the freeway.

I can’t imagine the adaptive cruise or the lane keeping will be significantly impacted by the rewrite, and those are really the only useful parts thus far. Everything else is just a gimmick so far. The only other utility I can think of is that if you’re in the habit of missing exits or freeway interchanges, NoA will remind you of that, even if it jerks you around and merges in behind traffic traveling at 55mph in an attempt to get over to your interchange exit lane TWO OR THREE MILES before your exit. C’mon Tesla. No one leaves the fast lane prior to one mile before their exit. At least make it configurable!

I couldn’t care less about the city driving aspect. At this point I am desperate to have something useful on the freeways (it is way better, and smoother, than it used to be, to be clear - but not good enough).

 

[DanCar]

... I just hope they don't mess up AP more than it is currently...

I think we can expect it will mess up AP and will be eventually be fixed. Hopefully fixed before the general release. That is the nature of rewrites, there usually are plenty of regressions. Does current AP have an issue running into curbs in city driving?

 

[cucubits]

Does current AP have an issue running into curbs in city driving?

Wait, is current AP supposed to work on city streets?

 

[DanCar]

Wait, is current AP supposed to work on city streets?

I see, that is an upcoming feature of FSD. Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability

• Upcoming:
  • Autosteer on city streets

 

[DanCar]

@AlanSubie4Life , Why is that funny?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

@AlanSubie4Life , Why is that funny?

I thought everyone knew that Autosteer on city streets wasn't released yet? It just gave me a little chuckle to see you point out that it was an upcoming feature (prior to your post, I thought everyone in this discussion (and maybe even most Tesla owners - though apparently many try to use it on city streets?) knew that!).

Autosteer on city streets which works well (it would only be Level 2) would be SUPER impressive, even if it is only ~10% of the way to the end goal.

 

[DanCar]

I thought everyone knew that Autosteer on city streets wasn't released yet? ...

I see youtubers testing it weekly so I admit I was confused. It maybe not released but I hear about co-workers and others talking about it frequently. I also see people using it frequently. I ride an electric unicycle and can easily peer into cars, and see Model 3 owners playing on their phones, not touching the steering wheel as they drive in the city.
So it may not be released yet, but there are plenty using it , it seems.

 

[powertoold]

The wording is very confusing. Autosteer does work on city streets.

Autopilot

• Traffic-Aware Cruise Control: Matches the speed of your car to that of the surrounding traffic
• Autosteer: Assists in steering within a clearly marked lane, and uses traffic-aware cruise control

Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I see youtubers testing it weekly so I admit I was confused. It maybe not released but I hear about co-workers and others talking about it frequently. I also see people using it frequently. I ride an electric unicycle and can easily peer into cars, and see Model 3 owners playing on their phones, not touching the steering wheel as they drive in the city.
So it may not be released yet, but there are plenty using it , it seems.

Yeah, that's just regular Autosteer they are "testing." It doesn't work on city streets, even if it is used there.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The wording is very confusing. Autosteer does work on city streets.

Can you explain? This is news to me - maybe I missed something in the pandemic! (A freeway in the city doesn't count!)

 

[DanCar]

... It doesn't work on city streets, even if it is used there.

Do you mean it doesn't work all the time, or it is not guaranteed to work? There are plenty of youtube videos that shows it works in simple cases, i.e. straight roads, which is the vast majority of cases.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The wording is very confusing. Autosteer does work on city streets.

Autopilot

• Traffic-Aware Cruise Control: Matches the speed of your car to that of the surrounding traffic
• Autosteer: Assists in steering within a clearly marked lane, and uses traffic-aware cruise control

Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability

Yeah, that Autosteer does not apply to city streets! It is confusing, probably intentionally.

From May 2020 Model 3 Manual:

Do you mean it doesn't work all the time, or it is not guaranteed to work?

Practically speaking there is no difference between these things. It doesn't work all the time, nor is it guaranteed or intended to work on city streets.

Maybe @Knightshade can explain!

 

[powertoold]

Well, autosteer essentially "always" works on city streets. Tesla doesn't recommend it, but it works (albeit poorly IMO), lol.

Tesla has videos showing autosteer being used on city streets. See the Autopilot support page I linked earlier (the traffic control feature video):

Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Tesla doesn't recommend it

They actually specifically say "Do not use Autosteer on city streets." (Death, injury, and damage can result.) Help, @Knightshade.

(Really, we should just let this drop, though. It's very very very clear that Autosteer does not work on city streets. There is no debate. There are much more interesting things to talk about.)