Future Of Tesla Looks Completely Autonomous As Elon Musk Wows Investors With Upcoming Features
Tesla is going all out today to woo its investors as the ¡®Tesla Autonomy Investor Day¡¯ unfolds at its Palo Alto headquarters. As the name of the event suggests, the emphasis is on the ongoing research and development on ¡®autonomous¡¯ driving of Tesla models and the future prospects of the technology. And if Tesla is to be believed, it might just be pioneering the next level of transportation real soon.
How? Let us try to figure it out backwards. Elon Musk, the company¡¯s CEO, concluded the investors meet with his master plan, now being called the Robotaxi plan, which is essentially to enable Tesla vehicles to drive on their own in a ride sharing network and make money for their owners.
To enable this, the firm has decided to come up with FSD computer, which will enable the full-self driving capability of Tesla vehicles via future over-the-air software updates. As for the present features in Tesla models, several updates under active development have been announced in its self driving software, called Autopilot, including refreshed graphics. The company even provided a demonstration of it on the day. Here is a video of the self-driving demo that the company released after the presentations.
As can be seen in the video, the new Autopilot version is able to autonomously drive the car on the highway and other roads, including intersections, a feature that is missing from the present version of the software.
Other newly added features include highlighting of the vehicle¡¯s path on the screen in blue and the fact that it no longer instructs the driver to apply pressure on the steering wheel.
FSD Computer
All this has been made possible through Tesla¡¯s new full self-driving computer which has been built from the ground up by the company. CEO Elon Musk even claims it to be ¡®objectively the best chip in the world¡¯.
Reason? The company says that it fathoms a factor of 21 improvement in frame per second processing against the previous generation Tesla Autopilot hardware powered by Nvidia hardware.
Tesla FSD Computer
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That is also the reason the company wanted to make its own chipset. Musk said that there was no chip built from the ground up for neural net till now. So they decided to build one and build the corresponding software around it too.
Tesla stated that the new FSD chip can be found in all new Model S and Model X units since March as well as in all new Model 3 units since earlier this month.
Robotaxi
A concept Musk has been pursuing since long, the Robotaxi comes as an amalgamation of his Part Deux vision for Tesla, only it seems much closer to becoming a reality now. This, because Musk now believes that Tesla will be able to develop all the software features needed for the autonomous ride sharing program by the end of this year.
Essentially, the concept will let Tesla owners add their cars to the operating shared fleet to earn money while they are not using it. The car will autonomously carry passengers to their destinations, requiring no input from a human driver.
Tesla Ride Sharing App (Image: Tesla)
At least that is the end goal. For now, Musk suggests that driver attention will be required for the fleet till Quarter 2 of 2020. Post that, as the company clears the regulations for the autonomous system, it will start deploying the system in the respective regions.
Once set up, the Robotaxi will put Tesla directly at the head of electric car ride sharing system. Simply because the car will be able to earn its money back to the buyers in due time and with due trips. Musk puts it in a rather fashionable way, saying ¡°[once this happens] It is financially insane to buy anything else than a Tesla.¡± And he explains that happening from these figures mentioned below:
These are the numbers shared by Tesla during its presentation to the investors. Tesla says that the stats have been picked up from the American Automobile Association (AAA) website and as per them, the average cost of running a car in the US is $0.62 per mile. The average cost of ride-sharing as per Uber rates in the US comes to $2-3. Now Tesla says that it will be able to operate its fleet of Robotaxi at less than $0.18. Going by these numbers, Tesla estimates a $0.65 gross profit per car per miles upon ride sharing, meaning that a car running for 90,000 miles annually will be able to earn as much as $30,000 for its owner per year.
Musk says that all the Tesla models have been designed to run for at least a million miles (16 lakh km). Around this, the Tesla CEO made another big announcement, stating that the company will be coming up with batteries by next year that will last for the same time, meaning they will be having a life cycle of a million miles, a huge jump from the currently offered 3,000 to 5,000 miles by these packs.
With so many claims to fulfill in a couple of year's time, Tesla should be getting real busy after its investors meet. Will they be able to deliver? Probably, probably not. But if you would bet your money on any company to fulfill such promises, it has to be Tesla.