Criticisms about Tesla's latest release of its Full Self Driving (FSD) software would be understandable if it comes from regulators, motoring pundits or even owners themselves. But a disparaging remark from the automaker's CEO itself, Elon Musk, is something else.
Musk tweeted on Monday that the company's experimental driver assistance software, now on its Beta 9.2 release, is "actually not great."
In his reply on a question about the software, Musk said that the Tesla "Autopilot/AI team is rallying to improve as fast as possible." He detailed attempts to "have a single stack for both highway and city streets" that would need immense neural network retraining.
FSD Beta 9.2 is actually not great imo, but Autopilot/AI team is rallying to improve as fast as possible.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2021
We’re trying to have a single stack for both highway & city streets, but it requires massive NN retraining.
This comes days after Musk touted Tesla's expertise in autonomous systems and components during the company's "A.I. Day," wherein a custom chip for training artificial intelligence networks in data centers were presented, the Wall Street Journal noted. These chips would allow A.I. models for the Tesla vehicle's cameras to automatically identify a variety of obstacles.
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The promise of FSD is to enable the vehicle to automatically change lanes, navigate on the highway, bring itself to a parking spot, and emerge from that area, moving a small distance, to where the driver is.
Tesla FSD Under Fire Over Crash Incidents
Tesla has come under fire after crash incidents involving its driver assistance system that led to scrutiny from U.S. regulators, Reuters reported. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a probe after a total of 11 Tesla cars on autopilot were involved in mishaps, including those with stationary emergency vehicles like fire trucks and police cars. These incidents led to the death of a woman and injuries to 17 people.
U.S. Senate Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey also called on U.S. Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan to investigate Tesla for misleading and endangering people in its marketing of the autopilot system as fully self-driving.
Tesla cars come equipped with the FSD, which features leverage cameras and additional sensors to assist drivers in keeping a safe distance from other cars on the road.
Tesla Announces FSD Beta 9.2 Features
Tesla's FSD is worth $10,000 as a one-time package or $199 a month in the U.S. It is, however, necessary to have an attentive driver behind the wheel to keep the vehicle safe. According to a CNBC report, Tesla employees and car owners who previously purchased FSD are those who could only use the newest beta versions.
The latest release, FSD Beta 9.2, offers new premium features--building on a new version of Tesla OS that offer language support and the game Sky Force Reloaded.
It has a clear-to-go boost through turns on minor-to major roads, Tesla announced. The new version also has smarter, enhanced peek behavior, multi-level predictions of other vehicles' directions, a New Lanes network, a new vulnerable road user (VRU velocity model), enabled inter-SoC synchronous compute scheduling, and a shadow mode for better VRU control.
