Tesla CEO Elon Musk just tweeted Monday morning, saying, "Limited FSD beta releasing on Tuesday next week, as promised. This will, at first, be limited to a small number of people who are expert & careful drivers."
This is going to be a big and closely-watched development in the automotive industry as Tesla is poised to let some drivers test fully self-driving cars next week.
Here are some thoughts about Elon Musk's latest announcement heralding the date and details of full self-driving Teslas.
So is the "limit" in the features or in the number of users or both? I think in the number of drivers.
Here is how one Reddit user, named sol3tosol4, interprets Elon's description of FSD Tesla.
"I interpret Elon's description to mean that on the particular drive he takes daily, it doesn't require intervention for a fairly high percentage of the times he takes that drive. But of course some days it does require intervention, likely due to variations in the behavior of other drivers. Also note that since Elon has been using that version for a while, he has a pretty good idea of what it is capable of, and may be more likely to not intervene when he knows the system is capable of handling it. A new user of that version may initially be more cautious, and be more likely to choose to intervene (until they become more familiar with how it works)."
I am exciting to see how good it will be when it releases.
Remember that expert and careful drivers will leak some footage hyping it up. Expert users are early adopters and bugs are OK for them - they understand what is needed to fix them.
I am also wondering if/what the NDA entails and how long it’ll take for video leaks.
How are Tesla's full FSD beta testers selected? Can any Tesla owner apply somehow? If yes, what are the risks for them?
"To be honest I am really excited but if this was anything as incredible as he is saying they would have released teaser videos and beta drives around San Francisco like they originally used to. Expecting it to be under welcoming," writes one person in Reddit discussion on the subject, but he also adds, "that being said if they show the techie side where it's actually identifying everything." That would be a very big thing in full self-driving.
Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.
