Tesla FSD continues to improve. It's likely to reach level 4 next year and level 5 in another 3 to 4 years.
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Tesla FSD March of 9's
Tesla FSD, when first released, was very rough and difficult to use. The graphics are like a 1980s arcade game, and interventions and disengagements were numerous. Nevertheless, there were a large group of people that were excited about this technology that began to use it and give feedback to Tesla.
Here we are, May 2023 and Tesla FSD has gotten much better. Even though a driver must be present to use the technology, many say that it is on par with a Level 3 system. As a refresher, here are the 5 levels of autonomy.
1: Driver Assistance Software
2: Partial Driving Automation
3: Conditional Driving Automation
4: High Driving Automation
5: Full Driving Automation
A level 3 system can definitely drive itself, but will require intervention from time to time. This is where Tesla is at today, but Tesla still requires a driver to pay attention at all times.
I think Tesla is going to have its first driverless rides next year, and they will start in areas that are easy to replicate drives that don't have interventions, such as in the Boring tunnels in the Las Vegas strip.
Rides in city areas such as San Francisco will happen next because Tesla has a lot of data for that area.
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Level 4 and Level 5
There are skeptics to Tesla FSD, of course, saying that it isn't quite ready, and every software release does some things better, but takes a step back in other ways.
Some of the current criticisms are:
* Tesla FSD puts the car in the wrong lane before turning
* There is terrible entry into left turn lanes
* There is questionable navigation
* There is hard braking because of anticipated traffic coming from the left or right
* There is difficulty merging into traffic
I think Tesla FSD is doing better at these from the videos I've watched, but it does need to get very good and consistent at being in the correct lane to make a turn and not waiting until the last minute to make a lane change. Sometimes, that lane change won't be available.
Construction zones are still difficult for FSD because Tesla doesn't have a large amount of data on how to handle these. Even as a human driver, I sometimes get confused on what to do in a construction zone and end up in the wrong place.
Tesla is going to have to handle the corner cases and have a good knowledge of how to make decisions in difficult construction situations in order for autonomy to be widespread. This is what the "March of 9's" is all about - it's all about increasing the accuracy beyond 99% to 99.9% then 99.99%, then, eventually, 99.99999% and beyond. I think this will happen within the next 4 years, with Level 4 next year and Level 5 around 2027.
How do you think Tesla FSD is going to reach Level 4 and Level 5?
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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.
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