Tesla FSD 12.5 (Full self driving) is proving to be another major leap in capability. Elon has said that 12.6 should be able to get to one intervention per year of driving. This would mean 15,000 to 20,000 miles per intervention if this is correct. Elon talked about the possibility of having drives without the human driver before the end of this year.
This would be superior to any of the robotaxi conpanies that can only operate in tiny geofenced zones. The Tesla FSD-robotaxi solution will be work everywhere and at unlimited scale.
Tesla Q2 earnings call revealed that Tesla could get FSD licensing partners to make millions of cars each year using Tesla FSD. Tesla could solve robotaxi level FSD (but not authorized by regulators yet) and also get huge partners in the few months left in this year.
The Tesla Q2 earnings call said that :
Multiple car makers have discussed FSD licensing.
Tesla will only bother to license to companies that can make or use over a million cars per year.
Currently only BYD makes over a million electric cars per year.
However, carmakers who could commit to over a million electric cars per year in 2-5 years time would be Geely, Xpeng, Li Auto and some other China carmakers. Hyundia/Kia, Volkswagen and Stellantis.
While only carmakers have been discussed there is the possibility of a major partner purchasing operating robotaxi with Tesla. The major partner who could buy and operate a million or more Tesla’s per year would be Didi, the Uber of China with over 20 million vehicles today. Uber with 7 million vehicles. The major Chinese robotaxi companies could get China government backing to get funding for million plus vehicle fleets.
Tesla said there will be a FEW new products to be shown on October 10, 2024 (robotaxi day).
FSD 12.5 has five times the AI parameters of 12.4.
A 12.5.X point release will merge the highway and city street software.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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One intervention per year for ONE person. Multiply this by one million for one million persons, and you get lots of interventions every day, potentially lots of accidents every day. I can’t imagine for 100 millions persons. A real FSD is no intervention at all, even in a billion mile, because you have to multiply by millions for a whole country or world.