The promises of hands-free driving and robot cabs have been around in the dreams of drivers and investors since Tesla first launched the possibility of an autonomous consumer-oriented vehicle. Despite this promise, Tesla has yet to launch a fully autonomous car for the public to buy. However, it still allows customers to buy the promise of the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) feature set for their vehicles that currently fall under the SAE definition of level 2 partial autonomy.
So, what exactly is Tesla doing in its newest advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) “FSD Beta”? It turns out that a series of recently discovered emails between Tesla and the California Motor Vehicle Department indicates that while the automaker’s ADAS systems are improving dramatically, hands-free driving will not reach a Tesla near you in the immediate future. .
Last October, Tesla released an over-the-air update for limited participants that it called “FSD Beta”, something that many perceived to be an early launch of Tesla’s long-promised hands-off package. In December, about 200 individuals had access to the program, 54 of whom were not Tesla employees (although that has probably changed, as CEO Elon Musk reported that Tesla had almost 1,000 people participating in the beta in January). Those included in the FSD Beta began to drive their vehicles and record the vehicle’s performance to post online.
FSD Beta, which is formally called “Autosteer on City Streets”, is part of the Full Self-Driving suite of ADAS features and not a stand-alone component that allows hands-free driving, as some may anticipate. This connotation exacerbated the confusion caused by the Full Self-Driving brand and sparked an email from California’s DMV. That email asked Tesla to provide immediate clarification on the FSD Beta functionality to ensure that the automaker was not testing on California roads without proper authorization to deploy such a feature.
“City Streets continues to firmly root the vehicle in SAE Level 2 capability and does not make it autonomous under the DMV definition,” wrote Eric Williams, Tesla’s associate general counsel, in a statement attached to an email with the California DMV . “The capabilities of City Streets with respect to the object and event detection and response (OEDR) subtask are limited, as there are circumstances and events that the system is unable to recognize or respond to.”
Williams went on to define circumstances such as adverse weather, complicated or adversarial vehicles on the driving path, construction zones, emergency vehicles, large uncontrolled intersections with multiple entry ways, occlusions, road debris, static objects and unmapped roads – all the things that one would expect a vehicle with level 3 or higher of partial autonomy to be able to identify and remedy, or at least notify the driver to take over.
Further reading indicates that Tesla’s current FSD Beta is limited to including updated views and Autosteer on city streets, no any form of direction without intervention, as many members of the public anticipated, given the name. This alone caused a great deal of confusion among current and potential owners, questioning whether or not FSD would be “full feature” (which CEO Elon Musk said would happen in late 2019), and whether that meant Tesla would reach the Level 5 autonomy until the launch of the FSD Beta for all drivers.
More confusion arose when Musk tweeted about “drive alone while playing“video games. This happened at the time emails were being sent to California’s DMV, and it almost certainly increased uncertainty, as other Twitter users have even replied to the tweet asking for access to the FSD Beta so that they could test it.
“[A] the final version of City Streets will remain a SAE Level 2, an advanced driver assistance feature, “continued Williams.” Please note that Tesla’s development of truly autonomous features (SAE Levels 3+) will follow our iterative process (development, validation, early release, etc.) and any of these features will not be released to the general public until we have fully validated them and received any necessary regulatory authorizations or approvals. “
To be fair, Tesla lists Autosteer on City Streets as a feature of the FSD; however, determining that the FSD Beta is not a preview of the Tesla driving experience without intervention is not so easy. Tesla is also notorious for changing what is included in its $ 10,000 Full Self-Driving menu offer, so it is quite possible that the speakerphone direction can be introduced at a later date with a different resource name.
If nothing else, it further proves that the world of autonomous driving is built on a hill of confusing semantics. The definition of “partial autonomy” seems to be a “no intervention” direction for others, and such a small designation is sufficient to create a serious risk – this type of marketing can be dangerous.
Have a tip or question for the author? You can contact them here: [email protected]