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Tesla’s race to autonomy: No one said it would be easy

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Need to type up a quick memo before work? Forgot to eat breakfast before driving to school? In just a few years, driving may be a more hands-off endeavor than ever before if companies like Tesla, Uber, Volvo, Alphabet, General Motors, or Ford have anything to do about it. You could be a passenger in your own self-driving car, weaving in and out of traffic with ease and parallel parking like a pro every time. It seems like most every company even tangentially related to cars is pouring money into the race for autonomy.

The freedom of self-driving cars is still heavily dependent on regulatory whim and technological availability, but some are setting demanding goals in an effort to finish first in that race. Tesla for example, plans to showcase its Full Self-Driving Capability by driving one of its fleet cars from California to New York, without human involvement, by the end of this year. But their competitors are moneyed, motivated and many.

 

The Self-Driving Battle Arena

For Uber, success in autonomous driving research could be a sweet distraction from the recent troubles of the company. Its self-driving program has been based in Pittsburgh, right next to Carnegie Mellon with its highly regarded robotics program since it began in 2015. Then-CEO Travis Kalanick was determined to stay on top of the industry. “It starts with understand that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous,” Kalanick said in a 2016 interview with Business Insider. “So if that’s happening, what would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way.”

Plagued by lawsuits, investigations, and subsequent executive upheaval that saw Kalanick’s resignation from the enterprise he founded, Uber is still one of the best places for researchers and engineers to work on their projects. The company has armies of vehicles across the country, vast datasets of information from the millions of miles its cars have covered through its ride-hailing branch, and the money to fund its engineers’ work.

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This does not mean that Uber’s self-driving program has remained untouched. Waymo, the autonomous car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is currently suing Uber over files allegedly by Anthony Levandowski when he moved from Waymo to Uber. According to Reuters, in recent court filings, Waymo has claimed that Uber knew of the stolen intellectual property and even conspired with Levandowski to use it. Uber denies the allegations and actually fired Levandowski on May 30, claiming he had not cooperated with their internal investigation– and probably hoping to win some goodwill from the judge who has already said Waymo had produced a convincing case.

It is unlikely the scandals will affect the decisions of most researchers to stay with the company. As Wired’s Aarian Marshall points out, the long timeline of building a safe autonomous car makes engineers less likely to leave at a moment’s notice in a period of executive instability. And the branch’s position in Pittsburgh rather than Silicon Valley means the roiling news is less sensationalized and the researchers less affected. The ride-sharing company’s failure to live up to certain promises, including backing one of Pittsburgh’s federal grant proposals or hiring from neighborhoods near its test tracks, have drawn ire from many local activists and politicians, as reported by the New York Times. Even so, it has helped the city break away from its steel past and into a high-tech future.

Meanwhile, Uber’s main competitor in the ride-sharing industry, Lyft, has been making strides to continue chipping away Uber’s monopoly in any field, including self-driving cars, as Uber deals with scandal after scandal. As reported by Recode, Lyft is steadily gaining ground on Uber in terms of the share of ride-hailing app downloads as its ratings in the IOS App Store rise and Uber’s falls. This recent shift in market share comes as Waymo and Lyft start a new partnership that will combine Waymo’s advanced technology with Lyft’s vast amounts of data on people, where and how they drive. “Lyft’s vision and commitment to improving the ways cities move with help Waymo’s self-driving technology reach more people, in more places,” a Waymo spokesperson told Wired. Extending Waymo’s dataset beyond the few cities, including Phoenix and Pittsburgh, allows the enterprise to collect the small details of average people’s driving habits much faster and accurately than its test drives around Silicon Valley will.

But despite Waymo’s eight years of self-driving research, it still has to play catch up to Uber in some regards. Waymo just started testing autonomous trucks earlier this month, while Uber first used a self-driving truck to deliver a shipment last August, advancing its technology quickly after it snatched up the self-driving truck startup Otto—founded by Anthony Levandowski after he left Waymo— in January of 2016. Yet, Waymo has the benefit of its parent company’s huge cash reserves and data.

Growing Pains

Tesla is moving its autonomous program forward at an increasingly demanding pace, trying to meet that goal of driving from Los Angeles to New York by the end of this year. It, like Uber, is going through some executive shakeup: after just six months with Tesla, Chris Lattner, Vice President of its Autopilot Software program, left the company after reported tensions with Elon Musk. Tesla explained that the former Apple engineer was not a “good fit.” It stands to mention that working under Musk is notoriously a high-pressure gig. According to LinkedIn Insights, the average tenure of a Tesla employee is only 2.2 years, while companies like General Motors keeps its employees for almost 9. But Lattner’s exit is just one example of many of talented Tesla self-driving engineers leaving the company or being poached by the competition, like Waymo.

While Autopilot can do many impressive things— change lanes, brake before obstacles, and generally act as a rational human driver— it is far from perfect. The program is still technically in “public beta” testing, and rated by the National Transportation Safety Board as a 2 out of 5 on its scale of autonomy.

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The fatal crash of a Model S owner Joshua Brown in May 2016 serves as a good reminder that drivers are cautioned to pay attention and keep their hands on the wheel at all times while using Autopilot. Tesla’s driving-assist feature, at the time, could not distinguish the difference between the bright sky and the white truck. Tesla and Autopilot were cleared of responsibility by the NTSB because Brown was given several warnings to take back control of the wheel. But it is a poignant example that Autopilot does not function as a self-driving car and still requires a driver’s full attention. After the accident, Tesla was forced to start developing its own hardware for Autopilot. Mobileye, which previously supplied Tesla’s image processing chips, ended its partnership in a public spat with Musk.

According to Lattner’s public resume, the transition to its own hardware presented “many tough challenges” to the Tesla team. Musk commented to shareholders in June that Tesla is “almost there in terms of exceeding the ability” of the original hardware. All of Tesla’s vehicles in production, including the upcoming Model 3, have the capability to engage Autopilot (for a price) and the necessary hardware to enable full self-driving someday. Autopilot will continue using the camera-based system that Tesla swears by, even as most of the industry focuses on developing LiDAR technology based on light and lasers.

And while Tesla prefers to work mostly alone, the rest of the industry is also pairing up, making deals, partnerships, and contracts between manufacturers, data giants, and service teams. Musk is taking a move out of Steve Jobs’ playbook by vertically integrating everything within the business, from top-to-bottom. Waymo and Honda, Lyft and Waymo, Autoliv and Volvo, Hertz and Apple, Intel and Mobileye, Audi and NVIDIA, and almost every other combination you could think of. Predictions for when the first company will reach the finish line range from within a year to two decades from now. And even if the car is made, there is still the question of if cities and states will allow autonomous vehicles to drive on their streets. The technology is closer than ever, but for now, please keep your eyes on the road.

 

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Elon Musk

Tesla’s new Robotaxi geofence shape is an FU by Elon Musk to the competition

Maybe it’s all pareidolia. But maybe it’s not. After all, Tesla embraced the first geofence expansion for what it appeared to be.

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tesla austin robotaxi geofence and elon musk laugh from meme review

Tesla expanded its Robotaxi geofence in Austin once again early Sunday morning. The new shape seems to be somewhat of a proverbial, and potentially literal, middle finger to the competition.

If you thought the first expansion was a message to the competition and doubters of the company’s ride-hailing service, you probably will believe the second expansion is an even stronger gesture.

Tesla’s first expansion did not go unnoticed, as its shape was particularly recognizable. The company has always operated with a sense of humor, and it embraced what it did. Some, including me, took it as a message to competitors: We can expand in any direction, in any size, at any time. We’ll prove it.”

They picked a shape and went with it:

Tesla’s Robotaxi expansion wasn’t a joke, it was a warning to competitors

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It is evident that Tesla is keeping its humor up to continue to show a few things. The first is that it really can expand in any direction it wants and that’s how it is choosing to show it.

The second, well, maybe it’s an edgier way to show doubters that it is really executing on Robotaxi:

Maybe it’s all pareidolia. But maybe it’s not. After all, Tesla embraced the first geofence expansion for what it appeared to be. This might be a similar occurrence, and it might be sending another message to the competition, critics, and doubters.

The expansion was a near-doubling of the geofence Tesla offered previously. After the initial geofence covered just about 20 square miles, Tesla was able to more than double it to 42 square miles with the first growth. This new geofence shape was just under double, and is about 80 square miles.

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Tesla’s rapid expansion has impressed many, especially considering the service area has roughly doubled for the second time in well under two months. The Robotaxi service was first offered on June 22.

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Tesla executes ‘a must’ with Musk as race to AI supremacy goes on: Wedbush

Dan Ives of Wedbush says Tesla made the right move getting Elon Musk his pay package.

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elon musk
Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) executed what Wedbush’s Dan Ives called “a must” this morning as it finalized a new pay package for its CEO Elon Musk.

The move helped give Musk his first meaningful compensation at Tesla since 2017, when the company offered a pay package that was based on performance and proven growth. That package was approved by shareholders on two separate occasions, but was denied to Musk both times by the Delaware Chancery Court.

On Monday, Tesla announced on X that it had created a new package that would give 96 million shares of restricted stock to Musk to compensate him for the “immense value generated for Tesla and all our shareholders.”

The details of the pay package are designed to retain Musk, who has voiced some concerns about his control of Tesla, as “activist shareholders” have used lawsuits to disrupt the previously approved package.

You can read all the details of it here:

Tesla rewards CEO Elon Musk with massive, restricted stock package

Ives says Musk’s retention is ‘a must’

Ives said in a note to investors on Monday that with the raging AI talent war that Tesla made a smart move by doing what it could to retain Musk.

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He wrote:

“With the AI talent war now fully underway across Big Tech, we believe this was a strategic move to keep TSLA’s top asset, Musk, would stay focused at the company with his priority being to bolster the company’s growth strategy over the coming years. With this interim award increasing Musk’s voting rights upon this grant, which Musk honed in on and mentioned was increasingly important to incentivize him to stay focused on the matters at hand, this was a strategic move by the Board to solidify Musk as CEO of Tesla over the coming years with this framework for Musk’s pay package and greater voting control removing a major overhang on the story.”

He went on to say:

“While the groundwork is now in place for the next few years, it will be critical for the Tesla Board of Directors to get this long-term compensation strategy in place prior to the company’s November 6th shareholder meeting which would address the elephant in the room and remove a significant overhang on the stock.”

Wedbush maintained its Outperform rating and its $500 price target on the stock.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveals ideal timeline for insane self-driving feature

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has extremely optimistic expectations for Full Self-Driving progress by the end of 2025.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed his ideal timeline for what would likely be the most insane self-driving feature: the ability for drivers to play video games at the wheel.

There are a handful of videos out there of drivers already performing this task. Nobody using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite should perform these activities, as the company maintains the system is not fully autonomous.

Drivers are responsible for the vehicle and should be prepared to take over.

Tesla has put a lot of faith in its development of Full Self-Driving and has made tremendous strides over the past few years. Capabilities have gotten more refined and accurate through various methods, including data collection and hardware improvements.

Tesla kicks Robotaxi geofence expansion into high gear in Austin

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It has gotten so good that Tesla launched a Robotaxi platform in Austin, Texas, on June 22. Passengers can hop in the back of a Model Y and will be transported around the city in a confined geofence that is about 90 square miles in size. There is nobody in the driver’s seat, but there is a Safety Monitor in the passenger’s seat.

Tesla launched a similar experience in California’s Bay Area last week, but the company has placed the Safety Monitor in the driver’s seat for that region for the time being.

Eventually, Tesla will get to a point where no monitor is needed, and the vehicles will be able to drive themselves. Many believe that it is a few years away, but Musk believes Tesla could achieve it very soon.

After a video of someone playing Grand Theft Auto in their Cybertruck while operating Full Self-Driving was shared on the social media platform X, Musk said this capability would be available in “probably 3 to 6 months, depending on regulatory approval in your city and state.”

It is important to remember that Musk has been very optimistic regarding autonomy timelines with Tesla projects. We heard for many years that the company would have self-driving vehicles “by the end of the year,” and those projects did not come to fruition.

While there was progress, there were no fully autonomous vehicles or software versions for customers.

With that being said, Tesla has made tremendous strides in its quest for autonomous vehicles this year, and launching a Robotaxi platform was a huge step in the right direction.

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