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Tesla Autopilot and artificial intelligence: The unfair advantage
Serial tech entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had a longstanding fear of artificial intelligence, but his company’s investments in artificial intelligence have been noted as an attempt to keep track of developments in the field of AI. In an interview for Vanity Fair in April 2017, he outright expressed his concerns with AI and claimed that one of the reasons for the development of SpaceX was that it could be an interplanetary escape route for humanity if artificial intelligence goes rogue. However, even Musk realizes the importance of AI in real-world applications, specifically for self-driving cars. At the end of June, Musk hired Andrej Karpathy as the new Director of Artificial Intelligence at Tesla, and MIT Technology Review claims it is the start of a plan to rethink automated driving at Tesla.
Karpathy comes from OpenAI, a non-profit company founded by Musk that focuses on “discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence.” Afterwards, he moved on to intern at DeepMind, a place that spotlighted reinforcement learning with AI. Karpathy’s previous research focuses are on image understanding and recognition, which directly translates into applying proven image recognitions algorithms in Tesla’s Autopilot.
Recently, the popular question of morality was brought up in context to AI learning in Autopilot cars. It’s very interesting to consider how to teach technology to respond to an innately human moral problem. The Moral Machine, hosted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a platform built to “gather human perspectives on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars.” It questions how the machine would act in human decisions such as whether to crash the driver or keep driving into a pedestrian that is crossing the street where there are no traffic regulators. How exactly do you teach a logical machine the mechanisms of ethical decision-making?
Although Musk and Tesla are the leaders in the self-driving field, a number of other companies are also entering into the competition sphere. Google, Uber, and Intel’s Mobileye have all been considering the application of reinforcement learning in the context of self-driving cars. Uber, Waymo, GM (Cruise Automation), Mobileye (camera supplier), Mercedes and Velodyne (LiDAR Supplier) could be potential competitors in the realm of self-driving vehicles. However, most of the technology does not encompass full self-driving, which is Musk’s aim. While other companies are investing heavily in autonomous fleets, Tesla far outpaces them in terms of data collection and release of finished product.
What are the differentiators for Tesla in the growing field of AI directed driverless cars?
Historically, Musk has focused on “narrow AI” which can enable the car to make decisions without driver interference. The vehicles would increasingly rely on radar as well as ultrasonic technology for sensing and data-gathering to form the basis for Tesla’s Autopilot algorithms. A technology that isn’t derived from LiDAR, the combination of radar and camera system said to outperform LiDAR especially in adverse weather conditions such as fog.
With the introduction of Autopilot 2.0 and Tesla’s “Vision” system, and billions of miles real-world driving data collected by Model S and Model X drivers, Tesla continues to create a detailed 3D map of the world that has increasingly finer resolution as more vehicles are purchased, delivered and placed onto roadways. The addition of GPS allows Tesla to put together a visual driving map for AI vehicles to follow, paving the path for newer and more advanced vehicles.
The addition of Karpathy will be a notable asset for Tesla’s Autopilot team. In specific, the team will be able to apply Karpathy’s deep knowledge of reinforcement learning systems. Reinforcement learning for AI is similar to teaching animals via repetition of a behavior until a positive outcome is yielded. This type of machine learning will allow Tesla Autopilot to navigate complex and challenging scenarios. For example, AI will allow cars to determine in real-time how to navigate a four-way stop, a busy intersection or other difficult situations present on city streets. By making cars smarter with the way they navigate drivers, Tesla will put itself ahead of the curve with a fully-thinking, fully self-driving car.
Tesla is expected to demonstrate a fully autonomous cross-country drive from California to New York by the end of this year as a showcase for its upcoming Full Self-driving Capability. If you’re buying a Tesla Model 3, or an existing Model S or Model X owner, just know that you’re contributing to a self-driving future, mile by mile.
The Tesla Model Y L is arguably the most hyped trim of the all-electric crossover, other than the Performance configuration that comes with white-knuckle speed and sports car-level handling.
However, it is not all perfect. Tesla owners in China who took delivery of the Model Y L, denoted with an L to highlight its longer wheelbase, are experiencing what they are referring to as “collapsing” of the rear wheels, as suspension issues appear to be an issue with some of the builds.
🚨 Model Y L owners in China report rear suspension sag
• Six-seat long-wheelbase Y. Shanghai. On sale since August 2025
• Owners say the rear tire-to-arch gap shrinks after mileage or a full load. Some cases after about 9,000 km loaded. Others near 30,000 km
• Tesla service… pic.twitter.com/Lr6i5Tbi07— Joe Hansen (@joehansen) September 1, 2026
The gap between the wheel arch and tire has narrowed to the point that “not even a single finger” could fit, according to a report from Car News China. The failures are not tied to a specific mileage, as one owner said that after just 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles), they noticed the suspension issue when their car was fully loaded.
Another one had the issue at 30,000 kilometers (18,640 miles) and noticed that the wheel gap shrank to two fingers, so not as drastic as the person who reported a similar issue at 9,000 km.
Tesla Model Y L is gaining momentum in China’s premium segment
Along with the visual recognition of the issue, others are saying the sagging is causing abnormal wear on the inside of the tires. Extra weight and instant torque already provide additional stress on the tires in electric vehicles during normal operation, so it is no surprise that this is another complaint.
There has been no recall issued by Tesla, and the company has not yet publicly acknowledged the issue.
Some are suggesting that owners use a “finger test” to self-diagnose whether there is an issue with the suspension. There should be four fingers between the tire and the wheel well; anything less than that starts to get dicey.
Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.
Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.
The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 2, 2026
The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.
However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.
No steering wheel, no pedals
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 2, 2026
Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.
Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.
News
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.
Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.
The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.
SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’
Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.
Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.
The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.
Tesla Model Y L gets suspension complaints in over odd issue China
Tesla Cybercab event gains steam ahead of massive launch
