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Tesla is patenting a clever way to train Autopilot with augmented camera images
Tesla is currently tackling what could only be described as its biggest challenge to date. In his Master Plan, Part Deux, CEO Elon Musk envisioned a fleet of zero-emissions vehicles that are capable of driving on their own. Tesla has made steps towards this goal with improvements and refinements to its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving suites, but a lot of work remains to be done.
As noted by Tesla during its Autonomy Day presentation last year, attaining Full Self-Driving is largely a matter of training the neural networks used by the company. Tesla adopts what could be described as a somewhat organic approach for autonomy, with the company using a system that is centered on cameras and artificial intelligence — the equivalent of a human primarily using the eyes and brain to drive.
Tesla’s camera-centric approach may be quite controversial due to Elon Musk’s strong stance against LiDAR, but it is gaining ground, with other autonomous vehicle companies such as MobilEye developing FSD systems that rely primarily on visual data and a trained neural network. This approach does come with its challenges, as training neural networks requires tons of data. Tesla emphasized this point as much during its Autonomy Day presentation.
With this in mind, it is pertinent for the electric car maker to train its neural networks in a way that is as efficient as possible with zero compromises. To help accomplish this, Tesla seems to be looking into the utilization of augmented data, as described in a recently published patent titled “Systems and Methods for Training Machine Models with Augmented Data.”
Teslas are equipped with a suite of cameras that provide 360-degree visual coverage for the vehicle. In the patent’s description, Tesla noted that images used for neural network training are usually captured by various sensors, which, at times, have different characteristics. An example of this may lie in a Tesla’s three forward-facing cameras, each of which has a different field of view and range as the other two.
Tesla’s recent patent describes a system that allows the company to process these images in an optimized manner. Part of how this is done is through augmentation, which opens the doors to flexible and widespread neural network training, even when it involves vehicles equipped with differently-specced cameras. The electric car maker describes this process as such:
“Augmentation may provide generalization and greater robustness to the model prediction, particularly when images are clouded, occluded, or otherwise do not provide clear views of the detectable objects. These approaches may be particularly useful for object detection and in autonomous vehicles. This approach may also be beneficial for other situations in which the same camera configurations may be deployed to many devices. Since these devices may have a consistent set of sensors in a consistent orientation, the training data may be collected with a given configuration, a model may be trained with augmented data from the collected training data, and the trained model may be deployed to devices having the same configuration.”
Among the most notable aspects of Tesla’s recent patent is the use of “cutouts,” which allow Tesla’s neural networks to be trained using an optimized set of images. This was something that was discussed by former Tesla Autopilot engineer Eshak Mir in a Third Row Podcast interview, where he hinted at a system adopted in the electric car maker’s ongoing Autopilot rewrite that helped lay out “all the camera images” from a vehicle “into one view.” Such a process has the potential to help Tesla with 3D labeling, especially since the images used for neural network training are stitched together. Tesla’s patent seems to reference a system that is very similar to that described by the former Autopilot engineer.
“As a further example, the images may be augmented with a“cutout” function that removes a portion of the original image. The removed portion of the image may then be replaced with other image content, such as a specified color, blur, noise, or from another image. The number, size, region, and replacement content for cutouts may be varied and may be based on the label of the image (e.g., the region of interest in the image, or a bounding box for an object).”
Tesla is aiming to release a feature-complete version of its Full Self-Driving suite as soon as possible. Elon Musk remains optimistic about this, despite the company missing its initial timeline that was set at the end of 2019. That being said, Elon Musk did mention previously that Tesla is working on a foundational rewrite of Autopilot. In a tweet early last month, Musk stated that an essential part of the rewrite involves work on Autopilot’s core foundation code and 3D labeling. Once done, the CEO indicated that additional functionalities could be rolled out quickly. This recent patent, if any, seems to give a glimpse at how these improvements are being done.
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Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
