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Tesla is currently testing the company’s Full Self Driving (FSD) beta software by rolling it out to the 2000 or so participants in the Autopilot Early Access Program (EAP).
The last major upgrade Tesla released to the EAP participants was FSD Beta 9. FSD Beta 9 brought with it major improvements including a transition towards a pure vision system.
Prior to FSD Beta 9, Tesla used hybrid data from the vehicle’s camera and radar sensors to drive the vehicle. However, FSD Beta 9 has started Tesla’s transition towards a pure camera system.
According to Elon Musk, current FSD Beta (v9.2) only uses the pure vision AI to drive on highways; however, “v11 will be the one to rule them all.” This means FSD Beta version 11 will transition to only using cameras for all driving situations.
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Still, owners lucky enough to test Tesla’s latest FSD build have reported the vehicle feels more poised when tackling challenging situations. However, work still remains to improve the system in specific edge cases.
Elon Musk also seems to agree with this sentiment. According to Musk’s previous comments, the current FSD beta version released to EAP participants, FSD Beta 9.2 is “actually not great”.
FSD Beta 9.2 is actually not great imo, but Autopilot/AI team is rallying to improve as fast as possible. We’re trying to have a single stack for both highway & city streets, but it requires massive NN retraining.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2021
Musk’s comments have caused a bit of a media circus with some publications claiming Musk admits Tesla’s FSD software is not good.
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However, today Musk clarified his statement saying he believes the current FSD Beta iteration is “amazing by most standards, [Tesla is] aiming for 1000% safer than the average human driver.”
It’s amazing by most standards, but we are aiming for 1000% safer than the average human driver— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2021
This is yet another example of how Tesla has such an advanced full self-driving system the company is only in competition with itself.
At Tesla’s latest AI Day presentation, Musk and team laid out several groundbreaking innovations Tesla is working on to achieve the 1000 percent improvement the company is looking to achieve with its full self-driving software.
Some of these innovations include labeling the neural network training data in 4D, 3 dimensions of space and time. That’s as opposed to labeling the training data in single frame pictures.
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Another breakthrough Tesla discussed at the AI Day includes making inferences in vector space. What that means is the video of the surroundings the vehicle takes in when driving will first be converted to a point cloud in the vector space which is then used to make predictions.
That’s on the software front, however, on the hardware front, Tesla also showed off Dojo and discussed a new timeline for autopilot hardware 4.0.
Dojo is a new neural network training supercomputer built by Tesla in-house. And according to Tesla, Dojo is 4 times faster than the second-fastest neural network training supercomputer.
As for autopilot hardware 4.0, this is the computer that goes into the vehicles. Musk says Hardware 4.0 is necessary to get FSD software from 300% better than the average driver to being 1000% better than the average driver.
Elon says this computer will be introduced to Tesla vehicles in about a year's time with the Cybertruck. This has begun speculations Tesla has delayed the Cybertruck to late 2022.
We will keep you posted as Tesla releases future upgrades to the FSD Beta software and Cybertruck timeline. Make sure to visit our site torquenews.com/Tesla regularly for the latest update.
So what do you think? Do you agree with Elon Musk that FSD Beta is amazing? Also are you excited for FSD Beta 11? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.
For more information check out: Environmental Groups With Dubious Ties To ICE OEMs Drop Their Legal Action Against Tesla Giga Berlin Also, see Tesla Notches Key Victory That Will Help It Avoid Production Delays At Giga Berlin
Tinsae Aregay has been following Tesla and The evolution of the EV space on a daily basis for several years. He covers everything about Tesla from the cars to Elon Musk, the energy business, and autonomy. Follow Tinsae on Twitter at @TinsaeAregay for daily Tesla news.
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