To The Moon

As Tesla progressively improves upon the Full Self-Driving Beta, the industry wonders: will Tesla be able to officially launch Full Self-Driving in 2023?

Past history would indicate that any prospective timeline is merely optimistic, and that Musk has traditionally held the progression of the software in higher regard beyond its actual production-ready status.

Today, the automaker’s own classification of the Full Self-Driving Beta landed at SAE Level 2, which is about two levels lower than where Full Self-Driving would have to be for an official launch with all of the intended functionality.

A minimum of SAE Level 4 would be necessary in order to navigate to a destination fully-autonomously without the need for driver intervention, as the Full Self-Driving Beta necessitates a less-than-ideal amount of interventions.

The latest Full Self-Driving Beta Version 11 release should plausibly improve upon the amount of required driver interventions per trip, as it combines the Full Self-Driving and more proven Autopilot stacks.

Version 11 also addresses the NHTSA’s more specific concerns related to yellow lights, stop duration, speed adjustments, and maneuvers out of turning lanes while fixing many highway-related issues. Beta participants will be particularly happy with how the latest version accounts for trucks.

It’s a step forward towards a production release, even if it’s still a Beta.

Yet, Tesla has had many roadblocks already on the path to a launch. From the hardware changes of 2.5 to 3.0 to the latest Hardware 4.0 launching on Model X to the distractions that have come up along the way, Tesla is a long way from a 2019-2020 release window but frankly not too far off of its initial hardware vision.

The most distinctive of those changes was a shift to a Tesla Vision camera-based system that doesn’t utilize radar, which the Full Self-Driving Beta still uses for its operational frameworks.

Radar would solve one of the most common issues with Tesla Vision: phantom braking, which even occurs as part of the active collision avoidance system. Tesla has gradually improved this with updates, making it a less common occurrence today.

However, Hardware 4.0 features a next-generation Phoenix radar module assumedly prepared for a next-generation version of Full Self-Driving. It’s also being presumed that this won’t be necessary for the launch version of Full Self-Driving, as Hardware 4.0 is non-retrofittable.

It’s been reported that some Tesla engineers have criticized the removal of radar and ultrasonic sensors, as they could prevent redundancies and false positives that could become potentially dangerous. One engineer went as far to say that the system was progressing “very slowly internally,” despite customers “wanting a product in their hands” which leads to feature releases.

He said a little over a year ago:

“Elon keeps tweeting, ‘Oh we’re almost there, we’re almost there.’ Internally, we’re nowhere close, so now we have to work harder and harder and harder.”

Engineers on the Autopilot team have been both let go and quit in the time since; however, many are still working diligently towards the end goal.

Worse yet, some of Tesla’s most talented engineers were transplanted to Twitter.

Thus far the Beta has nonetheless functioned relatively well across millions of miles and 400,000 participants using solely Tesla Vision. The overall crash rate is already six times better than a typical human driver.

The promise of Full Self-Driving is still quite profound: Sleep while a Tesla chauffeurs passengers to a destination. Enroll a Tesla in a robotaxi network to the collect a passive income. Experience the largest asset value increase in history.

Once it’s ready.

To be fair, the more miles that the Tesla fleet travels the more that Tesla will be able to rain its neural nets in preparation for Full Self-Driving. This is why it’s so critical today that as many responsible Tesla drivers as possible participate in the Beta, although Tesla can still learn from Autopilot and even manual fleet miles.

This is one of the key differences to Tesla’s approach compared to competitors, which usually map out landscapes in real-time using more complete and comparatively costly hardware including LiDAR.

That brings us back to the users that provide feedback on bugs, including the chief Full Self-Driving Beta tester Elon Musk who is too close to the project to be considered constructive according to some employees.

Customers are the most important aspect of Full Self-Driving: Tesla enthusiasts that spent as much as $15,000 for early access to a promise of the future.

The most realistic of that subset have realized by now that Full Self-Driving may be several years away. Meanwhile, a quick visit to Tesla’s new vehicle configurator makes it feel like a Full Self-Driving future is imminently on the way.

The latest timeframe we’ve heard is that Tesla could present a launch version of Full Self-Driving to regulators this year. Should this come to fruition, we would imagine it happening towards the end of the year.

An official launch is also likely to come with some caveats, although Tesla could possible have a product that looks and feels like Full Self-Driving with the ability to input a destination and have the vehicle travel autonomously following a similar disclaimer to Autopilot or the Beta: drivers must remain attentive at all times, and ready to intervene.

We could speculate that that will be first launch version of Full Self-Driving optimistically available this year, and that we should then see a Level 4 version that could power a Robotaxi within 2–3 years.

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