Blog Tesla Says Autopilot Hardware News Coming Soon

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.

 

[Cosmacelf]

He also embarrassed himself during the conference call by yelling out shame or some such words at a reporter who asked him hard questions about finances and production.

Did you read that somewhere? If so, where?

 

[MSDadMich]

I read quite a few opinions from skeptics on this forum. My opinion is that FSD is definitely the way of the future AND is just around the corner (translates to "count the years on one hand"), probably much faster. I am seriously thinking about putting the money down for the feature if for no other reason than I'll be making the purchase in the future anyways and this would guarantee me hardware if it is necessary... at no cost to me.
I love hearing how much progress is being made. Please... buy these cars and purchase the FSD option... make this tech cheaper for the masses as quickly as possible because I'm tired of dealing with the emotional wrecks that share the road with me on the way to the office!

 

[a4refillpad]

It's worth pointing out the offer to swap out the hardware if existing equipment is insufficient only for those who have purchased the FSD option in advance. Those who chose to wait and only purchased the EAP option are unlikely to be covered.

 

[MIT_S60]

Elon also commented yesterday that if the current EAP (AP2) computer ultimately does not prove capable of supporting FDSC (he used that term specifically) than Tesla would swap it out and plug in a more powerful computer, which he said would be “easy”. He said he believed that would not be necessary but an important factor that Tesla cannot control is what the regulators decide as to how safe an autonomous vehicle has to be compared to human drivers, and he said that right now the regulators have not specified that parameter.

I think the real question remains whether that swap will be baked into the $4k post-delivery FSD price point, or whether the cost to enable FSD will increase (which would be pretty lame for owners).

 

[Aeg07046]

He also said that the fix may be hardware related and it would involve a faster processor simply swapped out. . \

He also embarrassed himself during the conference call by yelling out shame or some such words at a reporter who asked him hard questions about finances and production.

Not exactly. There were no reporters on the call, just investment bankers. Elon expressed frustration about press stories about "troubles at Tesla and layoffs of 700+ people." He stated that the terminations were about 2% of the total employees of Tesla and were performance related as opposed to anything else. He explained that the stories should have been "while large companies like GE fire up to 10% of their workforce every year for performance reasons, Tesla only fired 2%" as opposed to what was written.

 

[Doug_G]

Did you listen to the earnings call?

I did. Elon used the word “shame” (with no yelling) in reference to those journalists who wrote stories about Tesla’s recent firing of some workers who failed their annual performance review because their articles failed to provide any context.

He said that hundreds of workers also got promoted because of their excellent performance reviews. He said that Tesla fired a far smaller percentage of their work force then other car companies had done due to poor performance.

I heard no yelling. I did hear him get emotional talking about this subject because he clearly felt that the reporting was very poor and did not provide the necessary context for the reader to understand what Tesla had done.

I've become skeptical about these firings. They fired one of the best service people I've ever worked with. I can't believe he would be considered underperfoming. More likely they got rid of him because his seniority made him more expensive. If that's the case, financial motivation sounds much more likely.

Of course it may be that Elon isn't aware of everything that his managers have been doing.

 

[Tam]

...GE...

How Millennials Forced GE to Scrap Performance Reviews

GE Performance Reviews were like a religion during the regime of CEO Welch from 1981 to 2001.

Why are we (non-GE) still believing in that religion in decades later in 2017?

"The move by more and larger companies away from annual reviews and ratings is well past due, say management theorists. Years of research, from both business school professors and neuroscientists, has found that the practice is ineffective at boosting performance, actively alienates employees, is based on a flawed understanding of human motivation, and is often arbitrary and biased. People simply don't fit neatly (pdf) on a bell curve. It ends up being an exercise in paperwork and bureaucracy instead of an agent of change.

"When you look at the evidence about stack ranking".... The kind of stuff that they were doing, which was essentially creating a bigger distribution between the haves and the have nots in their workforce, then firing 10 percent of them, it just amazed me," Bob Sutton, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, told Quartz. "We looked at every peer-reviewed study we could find, and in every one, when there was a bigger difference between the pay of the people at the bottom and the top there was worse performance."

 

[comanchepilot]

I heard no yelling. I did hear him get emotional talking about this subject because he clearly felt that the reporting was very poor and did not provide the necessary context for the reader to understand what Tesla had done.

no problem - your idea of emotional and my idea of outburst [yelling, raised voice, emotional comment, whatever] depends on what is appropriate in a Wall Street analyst conference call concerning quarterly results - I happen to think that anyone involved in dealing with WS analysts would think that his 'expression of emotion and passion' in the call was completely inappropriate. . . .

But, as I said, here - it doesn't really matter.

And @mkjayakumar - I don't have google in my name - you can listen to the call - about mid way through - its page 6 of the transcript.

 

[Cosmacelf]

He also embarrassed himself during the conference call by yelling out shame or some such words at a reporter who asked him hard questions about finances and production.

no problem - your idea of emotional and my idea of outburst [yelling, raised voice, emotional comment, whatever] depends on what is appropriate in a Wall Street analyst conference call concerning quarterly results - I happen to think that anyone involved in dealing with WS analysts would think that his 'expression of emotion and passion' in the call was completely inappropriate. . . .

And @mkjayakumar - I don't have google in my name - you can listen to the call - about mid way through - its page 6 of the transcript.

Wow, you sure got it completely wrong based on your recollection. You originally said "he yelled out shame at a reporter who asked him hard questions".

This was at the beginning of the conference call before any questions were asked. It was a monologue and at the very end of the monologue he talked about the bad reporting about the layoffs and ended it with a word, "shame". Not yelled, just stated. Not directed at anyone in particular. And it wasn't as result of someone asking hard questions about finances and production.

Kinda ironic as this is EXACTLY the thing Elon was talking about. People who make up *sugar* and report it as news.

 

[kort677]

Kinda ironic as this is EXACTLY the thing Elon was talking about. People who make up *sugar* and report it as news.

kind of like the reporting in the political arena? why would it different in this arena. "journalists" no longer are content with reporting stories they make themselves part of the stories.

 

[Super_Popular]

"Coming soon", is that 2018 or 2019?

 

[Burnt Toast]

It's worth pointing out the offer to swap out the hardware if existing equipment is insufficient only for those who have purchased the FSD option in advance. Those who chose to wait and only purchased the EAP option are unlikely to be covered.

Yeah, but they also promised 90kw to 100kw upgrades, and that never happened.

 

[kort677]

More likely they got rid of him because his seniority made him more expensive. If that's the case, financial motivation sounds much more likely.

this is far more common than most know. people in the middle of the pack corporate ladder wised with a lot of time in the company and received the usual annual raise bringing their salaries beyond the limits of their position in the company are squeezed out because their upside potential is nowhere and the costs of keeping them in place are too high for the position they are in.
they are usually replaced by a combination of technology and lower paid younger workers.

 

[deonb]

according to a google search, the word "several" can mean around 2 to 3 but no more than 6.

I don't think Google has quite come to grips with 'Elon time' yet.

 

[EinSV]

I don't think Google has quite come to grips with 'Elon time' yet.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin forecast in 2012 that self-driving cars would be ready in five years, and in May [2014], said he still hoped that his original prediction would come true. The Self-Driving Google Car May Never Actually Happen
​

Self-driving cars a reality for 'ordinary people' within 5 years, says Google's Sergey Brin

 

[kort677]

I don't think Google has quite come to grips with 'Elon time' yet.

nor have many of the true acolytes

 

[Cosmacelf]

The reality is that no one knows when full self driving will happen because there is no engineering road map to get there. It is a research project. Kinda like predicting when we will get commercially viable 30% efficient solar cells or batteries with double the energy density. We may never get there.