Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Software Update: A Game Changer?

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, recently made a bold claim about the company’s next “Supervised Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software update. According to Musk, the update will result in a “5 to 10x improvement in miles per intervention.” If this claim holds true, it could be a game-changing moment in the development of Tesla’s self-driving system.

The Promise of the FSD Update
Last week, Musk discussed Tesla’s plan for the next few FSD updates. These updates have generated significant hype due to the retrained neural nets. Now that the entire system is neural nets end-to-end, Tesla is no longer constrained by training compute power.

The first of these updates, v12.4, is expected to be released as soon as this week. Musk has stated that it will be available in “limited external beta” next week and claims a “roughly 5 to 10x improvement in miles per intervention.”

While Tesla doesn’t release any data for its FSD program, v12.3 was already seen as a significant improvement for reducing driver intervention. A further 5 to 10x improvement would elevate the system to a whole new level.

Musk also commented on v12.5, which he expects to be released in late June. He stated that it will also see a major improvement and is a single stack – no more implicit stack on highways. Interestingly, Musk had previously claimed that v11 was a single stack, merging the code base for highway and city driving.

Skepticism and Hope
While a 5 to 10x improvement sounds incredible, it’s important to approach these claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. Firstly, 5x to 10x is a massive range. If Musk can’t pinpoint more than that, it indicates that his visibility into the level of improvement is not that great.

Secondly, Musk had previously told us that v11 was a single stack. Now, it’s v12.5? This inconsistency makes it hard to trust anything he says about these updates.

Despite these concerns, the potential for a significant leap in self-driving technology is exciting. As we await the release of these updates, we can only hope that they live up to the hype.

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Source: Electrek