Elon Musk will turn all Teslas into Robotaxi — FSD autopilot will be improved

For many years, Tesla has been developing the full autopilot function — FSD (Full Self-Driving). So far, the reality is far from the promising name. FSD has repeatedly led to accidents. For example,Cybertruck with FSD crashes into a poleand then the carTesla on autopilot suddenly drove off the roadThe car crashed into a tree and overturned. Nevertheless, the company is not stopping and is preparing another major update of its own autonomous platform using the achievements based on Robotaxi.

A month ago Tesla launches Robotaxi service in pilot mode in Austin. The experiment involves several of the new Model Ywhich are self-driving (although the driver sits behind the wheel for safety). Although their hardware platform is standard, the software differs from the version of FSD that owners of conventional Tesla electric vehicles currently receive.

And now Elon Musk promises a «qualitative improvement» in the next release of FSD for conventional electric vehicles. This improvement will be possible thanks to the lessons learned from the launch of the Robotaxi service. According to him, the company is preparing to combine the experimental branch of the Robotaxi software with the main commercial version, but will do so carefully so that the innovations do not lead to deterioration in other use cases.

During the tests in Austin, Tesla uses the so-called FSD «unattended». This means that the car does not require constant attention from the driver and is able to move completely independently. The local Department of Transportation has classified such a system as Level 4 autonomous — meaning it does not require a human driver. At the same time, the basic version FSD is still classified as «with supervision». It requires the driver to be focused on the road situation, keep their hands on the wheel and be ready to take over at any time.

But in order to get permission for Robotaxi to operate in this way, Tesla has limited the area where the service is used locally. In this sense, Tesla’s approach temporarily approximates how Waymoalthough the latter relies on a combination of sensors and LiDAR. At the same time, Tesla refuses such solutions on principle, developing an FSD system using only cameras.

Before the new FSD becomes available to everyone, Tesla wants to conduct more tests. Particular attention will be paid to ensuring that the new version works well not only in Austin but also in any other place. Musk emphasized that the company does not want optimization for a specific region to cause errors elsewhere.

Tesla plans to combine the experimental FSD branch with the public one by the end of the year. The update will include four times more parameters, as well as optimized memory usage — only what is needed for a particular calculation. This will allow the system to work faster and more efficiently.

Source: notebookcheck