Humanless FSD in Sight?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again made a prediction on when we can expect Tesla vehicles to operate without the need for human intervention.
While speaking to reporters in Brazil over the weekend, Musk said he expects Tesla will have self-driving cars without the need for human drivers by this time next year.
Now, this is definitely not the first time Elon’s made this prediction - he’s been saying this in one form or another for years. But his predictions aside, Tesla’s FSD tech has been getting steadily more and more reliable as testing has continued.
Self driving software operates on a level system from 0-5 which describes the reliability of the autonomy of the vehicles in question. The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted a standardised system from the Society of Automotive Engineers described as follows:
“LEVEL 0: No Driving Automation
Just as it sounds, there’s no automation here: the human is in full control of all driving tasks with zero assistance.
LEVEL 1: Driver Assistance
This is the lowest level of assistance. The human is in full control, but gets a little guidance from a single advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), for things like acceleration, cruise control or braking — but only for one task at a time.
LEVEL 2: Partial Driving Automation
With partial automation, the driver is still in full control, with full attention to the road, but the “help” is a little more refined. The ADAS has combined automated functions, which for the human means the system could potentially control both steering and braking/accelerating simultaneously.
LEVEL 3: Conditional Driving Automation
Imagine a fully automated assembly line that requires full human supervision in case of a needed override — that’s essentially how level three works. In this case, the vehicle can operate on its own in certain circumstances. Functions like steering, braking, and acceleration are automated, but the driver has to be ready to step in.
LEVEL 4: High Driving Automation
At this level, it’s “minds off,” as the car can perform all driving tasks, and can intervene if something goes awry. That said, Level 4 only works for location-restricted trips driving from point A to point B and back — think autonomous Uber Eats deliveries.
LEVEL 5: Full automation
Full automation: the aspirational goal for vehicles of the future. With fully automated self-driving cars, you could basically read a book or play on your phone, as the vehicle can perform all driving tasks under all circumstances.”
Tesla’s FSD is considered a Level 2 automated system (Though it wouldn’t be a stretch to say it’s a Level 3 system), and as update after update irons out kinks, solves system confidence issues, trains its visual systems to identify hazards, signs and objects; it’s clear we very well might reach Level 4 autonomy by this year - which might be what Elon is referring to.
Over 100,000 Tesla drivers are part of the current FSD program, and Musk thinks that number will climb to over a million by year’s end. This amount of folks testing the program will make for much better data for further updates. The most recent one - update Beta v10.12 - makes it clear that video clips from drivers are being used to help train the system to identify objects.
With that in mind, anyone wanting to track the course of FSD can and should be looking at the Beta release notes, instead of Tesla’s enthusiastic CEO.