Tesla's self-driving saga continues with more promises and more delays

It is becoming painfully obvious that Tesla has been a little bit ambitious with its self-driving technology promises. The company's latest progress updates on its Full Self-Driving (FSD) program are seriously testing the patience of Tesla enthusiasts. While the EV pioneer continues to paint a rosy picture of autonomous driving, the reality seems to be lagging behind the rhetoric.

Tesla unveiled its 'AI roadmap' outlining updates and new features for its FSD program. Although initially welcomed as a way to track Tesla's progress towards its self-driving goals, a closer look quickly reveals some glaring inconsistencies.

Due to popular demand, Tesla AI team release roadmap:

September 2024
- v12.5.2 with ~3x improved miles between necessary interventions
- v12.5.2 on AI3 computer (unified models for AI3 and AI4)
- Actually Smart Summon
- Cybertruck Autopark 📐
- Eye-tracking with sunglasses 🕶️
-…

— Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) September 5, 2024

Tesla's claim of a "3x improvement in miles between necessary interventions" with its v12.5 update comes so far with no official data to support it.

Independent data collected from Tesla owners paints a different picture. Crowdsourced data, based on over 40,000 miles of driving, suggests that v12.5 is actually a step back from the previous v12.3 update.

To make things even worse, Tesla is yet again delaying the release of the v13 version to November. It was initially promised for September, then October, and now Tesla is promising a wide release around Thanksgiving time. The company claims that v13 will bring significant improvements, including a 4x increase in miles between necessary interventions compared to v12.5.4. With Tesla's track record of delivering on its promises, we are going to keep the champagne in the fridge for now.

As October comes to a close, here's an update on the releases

What we completed:
- End-to-end on highway has shipped to ~50k customers with v12.5.6.1
- Cybertruck build that improves responsiveness
- Successful We, Robot event with 50 autonomous Teslas safely transporting over… https://t.co/2xKiAjrk5R

— Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) October 31, 2024

The v13 update will initially be available only for Tesla owners with the latest HW4 hardware. This leaves HW3 owners in a state of uncertainty, as their systems are falling months behind HW4 with no clear timeline for catching up.

The delay of v13 and the prioritization of HW4 have people questioning Tesla's commitment to its existing HW3 customers. These customers were promised FSD capability, and are now facing the prospect of being left out of pocket and behind in the race toward autonomous driving.

There's no denying that Tesla has made huge progress when it comes to autonomous driving. Its vision-only reliance is actually quite remarkable; the software has progressed over the years in leaps. No one will ever take that away from Tesla. But the over-promising is wearing thin; every hyped-up update ends up doing a disservice to the company. While it was a controversial marketing approach years ago, these days, there is simply no more room for it. Will Tesla ever achieve fully autonomous driving? Absolutely yes. Will it be this year or the next? No chance.

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