The Tesla Cybertruck may be the electric vehicle maker’s most exciting product today, but it does not mean to say that the all-electric pickup truck will also be first in line when it comes to receiving the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta updates. This was revealed by CEO Elon Musk in a recent post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Tesla has been running its FSD Beta program for over three years now, and since then, Full Self-Driving has made notable headways. Since the initiative was launched in October 2020, FSD Beta users have driven over 500 million miles using the advanced driver-assist system, as noted in Tesla’s Q3 2023 Update Letter. This number has likely grown even more in the fourth quarter.
With Cybertruck deliveries now ongoing, some longtime FSD Beta users have inquired when FSD Beta would be released for the steel pickup truck. The Cybertruck, after all, is equipped with the best tech that Tesla can offer today, from its steer-by-wire system to its Hardware 4 computer. For all intents and purposes, the Cybertruck seems to be a perfect fit for FSD Beta’s latest iterations.
Cybertruck is necessarily lowest priority for FSD, as there only a few hundred Cybertruck in the field compared to ~5 million other Teslas
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2023
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, however, explained that this is not necessarily the case. As per Musk, the Cybertruck is “necessarily lowest priority for FSD.” Such a statement may sound surprising considering all the hype surrounding the all-electric pickup, but Musk noted that this is due to the limited number of Cybertrucks that are currently on the road. “There only a few hundred Cybertruck in the field compared to ~5 million other Teslas,” Musk wrote.
While Musk’s update may seem quite disappointing, it is also understandable. The Cybertruck, after all, is a much larger vehicle compared to Tesla’s other electric cars. And while there will likely be a lot of transferred learning when FSD Beta is rolled out for the Cybertruck, fine-tuning of the system will be needed to adapt the advanced driver-assist system for the pickup truck.
Absolutely, but that fine tuning will require a good deal of data (miles driven on Cybertrucks) and of course training time, QA testing, beta rollouts, and on and on. So it's not trivial for them to do it.
— DrKnowItAll (@DrKnowItAll16) December 31, 2023
As noted by UGA professor and Tesla YouTube host @DrKnowItAll16, the fine-tuning that will be involved for Cybertruck’s FSD Beta will require a lot of real-world data, training time, QA testing, and other critical processes. And as noted by Musk, there is really not that much Cybertruck real-world data for now, considering the limited number of vehicles on the road.
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