Tesla’s Autonomous Milestone: 10 Billion Miles Driven
In a significant development for autonomous vehicles, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) technology has surpassed the 10 billion mile mark, according to the company’s updated safety page. This milestone aligns with the benchmark set earlier this year by CEO Elon Musk for achieving “safe unsupervised” driving.
Despite reaching this impressive milestone, Tesla’s vehicles remain at Level 2 automation, meaning they still require an alert human driver ready to intervene. Although Musk once suggested that achieving 10 billion miles of training data would enable unsupervised driving, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system continues to necessitate active driver supervision.
“Roughly 10 billion miles of training data is needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving,” Musk stated in January on X, hinting at a future where Tesla drivers might experience a hands-off driving experience. However, transitioning to unsupervised driving raises questions about legal liability, especially considering Tesla’s current approach, which places responsibility on the vehicle’s owner rather than the company.
The potential shift to unsupervised driving poses significant risks and uncertainties. While other companies like Waymo assume liability for crashes involving their technology, Tesla’s terms of service classify FSD as a Level 2 system, thereby placing liability on the owner. This raises the question: What happens when FSD goes unsupervised? Who assumes responsibility for a crash then?
Tesla’s history of crashes involving its autonomous features has been fraught with legal challenges, yet the company has frequently avoided liability. On its website, Tesla insists that FSD (Supervised) “requires active driver supervision and does not make the vehicle autonomous.” In a landmark case, a federal jury in Florida found Tesla partly liable for a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash and awarded $243 million to the victims’ families, a verdict Tesla unsuccessfully appealed.
Nevertheless, Tesla’s achievement of 10 billion miles is notable. The company asserts that vehicles equipped with FSD average 5.5 million miles before a major collision, significantly higher than the average US driver’s 660,000 miles, suggesting enhanced safety. Yet, experts question the methodology behind these claims, noting that Tesla’s safety reports may overlook crucial traffic factors such as the prevalence of crashes on city and undivided roads where Autopilot rarely operates.
While customers await unsupervised driving capabilities, Tesla is expanding its use of autonomous vehicles in its robotaxi service. The fleet, which started with two vehicles in Dallas and Houston, now includes multiple unsupervised vehicles: five in Dallas, six in Houston, and 22 in Austin, alongside 29 supervised ones, as reported by the Robotaxi Tracker.
The prospect of unsupervised driving is enticing for Tesla enthusiasts, but legal and safety concerns continue to be hurdles. In a recent earnings call, Musk mentioned that unsupervised driving would become available “when it is legal to do so,” predicting its arrival in customer cars by the fourth quarter of the year. Yet, whether this represents a definitive threshold or merely another goalpost remains to be seen.
Original Story at www.theverge.com