Just some days after launching a restricted robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, Tesla pulled off an extra stunt meant to point out off the progress of its self-driving automotive software program. The corporate let a Mannequin Y SUV drive roughly 15 miles from Tesla’s manufacturing unit to the house advanced the place the automotive’s new proprietor lives, finishing what CEO Elon Musk referred to as the primary “autonomous supply” of a buyer automotive.
The automobile was supposedly outfitted with the identical software program Tesla’s robotaxi Mannequin Ys are utilizing in Austin, however upon supply was downgraded to the commercially-available Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software program that requires drivers to concentrate and be able to take over at any second. Nobody was on board and Musk claimed no distant help was given to the automotive.
The stunt got here at an auspicious time for Tesla, which is about to launch second-quarter supply figures this week and monetary outcomes for the interval later this month. These numbers are anticipated to be grim for Tesla, which noticed gross sales fall in 2024 — earlier than Musk took a chainsaw to the corporate’s public picture by getting concerned with the Trump administration. Positive sufficient, Tesla’s inventory value shot up late Friday after Musk first posted concerning the drive (though it has since fallen after a tough day of buying and selling Monday).
I used to reside within the metropolis and have pushed by this space of South Austin lots; the trail the Mannequin Y took was advanced, even on a vibrant, sunny day in the midst of the afternoon. Within the 30-minute video of the journey (Tesla additionally posted a sped-up model that lasts round 3.5 minutes), the automotive merges on and off of a freeway, turns proper on crimson, navigates a small roundabout, and makes an unprotected left flip.
These have been difficult situations for autonomous automobiles that have been in improvement only a few years in the past, so it’s hanging to see a automotive navigate them multi function go in actual day-to-day visitors.
Tesla’s not the one one that may deal with this mixture of highways and floor streets. Waymo automobiles have been driving on highways in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco (thus far, just for workers), and even Zoox gave us a driverless trip throughout a mixture of 45-mile-per-hour roads and aspect streets in Las Vegas in January.
Whereas Tesla’s video of the drive is simple, it conjures up an inventory of questions. One of many largest is about what sorts of preparations Tesla made earlier than letting this automotive by the manufacturing unit door.
It’s a related query as a result of Tesla famously launched and promoted a video of certainly one of its vehicles supposedly driving itself by the Bay Space (with an worker appearing as a security operator within the driver’s seat) in 2016 that was, at greatest, deceptive and, at worst, basically staged.
On the time, Tesla made that drive appear easy. However the firm had pre-mapped the route and tried it a number of occasions earlier than the drive proven within the video, with the automotive requiring that the protection operator take management. Tesla engineer Ashok Elluswamy mentioned in a 2022 deposition that the “intent of the video was to not precisely painting what was accessible for purchasers in 2016. It was to painting what was attainable to construct into the system.”
Musk was additionally intimately concerned within the making of that video.
Tesla automobiles have been noticed utilizing lidar and different exterior sensors within the space of South Austin the place the restricted robotaxi trial is going down — have been these automobiles used to prep this explicit drive? We’ve requested Tesla, however the firm not responds to media requests.
Additionally, can Tesla’s software program safely run this route dozens of occasions with out intervention (in-car or distant)? A whole bunch of occasions? 1000’s? Doing this as soon as is an accomplishment, but it surely’s the flexibility to repeat this type of drive and do it safely that’s the final check of whether or not the expertise is dependable.
What’s extra, this buyer supply drive lives within the shadow of a a lot greater promise Musk as soon as made (additionally in 2016, though he repeated it in years since) about how Tesla’s self-driving software program would have the ability to take a automotive from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis with none interventions.
As is the case with the early robotaxi check, there’s nonetheless lots we don’t learn about how nicely issues are going, and the way any of that is alleged to scale.
One factor that appears notable, although, is that worst criticism Dan O’Dowd, probably the most outspoken critics of Tesla’s FSD software program, may increase in an electronic mail to TechCrunch concerning the supply drive was that the automotive finally got here to a cease in a fireplace lane outdoors the brand new buyer’s house. A good criticism, however a minor one coming from a man whose group was hurling child-sized dummies in entrance of Mannequin Y SUVs only a few brief weeks in the past.
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