Tesla has just announced “full self-driving hardware” on all of its cars, including the upcoming Model 3, in anticipation of a big software update to be released sometime around December 2016 (hopefully).
This will enable fully autonomous driving “in almost all circumstances” – they mention rain, fog, and dust, but no snow – at a level of safety that Tesla believes is already 2x better than the average human driver.
This is being accomplished through a souped up onboard computer and by increasing the number of surround cameras from 4 to 8. Here’s a diagram (via Tesla) of how those cameras work and how they will capture a 360 degree view:
A couple of immediate thoughts / takeaways:
The Smart Summon feature is obviously very cool. Summon on your smartphone and your car will come find you. Elon Musk has said that it will eventually find you even if you happen to be on the other side of the country.
But this assumes that there are solid metal snake chargers (or something else) to automatically charge your vehicle somewhere on route. It also suggests that the vehicles won’t be equipped to cross international borders by themselves.
Elon Musk has said that (unfortunately) retrofitting older Tesla vehicles to full self-driving hardware will be very difficult and costly – the cost delta is greater than buying a new car. This reinforces my belief that leasing, rather than owning, is probably a wise strategy right now given how much change is happening in the auto space.
Lastly, here’s some fine print from the Tesla Auto Pilot website:
“Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.”
Uber vs. Tesla. Round 1. Fight.
If you’d like to see a full self-driving Tesla in action, check out the video on their website.
Last night I had a dream that I was driving around in a snowstorm and, for whatever reason, my tires had almost no tread on them. So I was all over the road. Strange. I have no idea what this means, if anything at all.
But it did remind me that I can absolutely imagine a time when the thought of driving your own car (outside of it being maybe a hobby) will seem positively archaic. I mean, think about how messy our current system is. Roads are a chaotic and oftentimes dangerous place.
The more interesting question for me though is: how will self-driving vehicles change our cities, our habits, and so on? In Elon Musk’s recently published Master Plan (Part Deux) he outlines 4 main goals for Tesla:
Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it
Let’s think about what these could mean.
One translates into decentralized energy generation and storage. Now all of a sudden the cars on our roads will be roaming around our cities collecting and storing energy, eventually returning home at the end of the day to power our homes. I can already imagine fleets of sun worshipping cars chasing the light as it moves across our cities.
Two is recognition that self-driving vehicles are going to have a meaningful impact on traditional public transit. (Elon reveals that Tesla is working on high passenger-density urban transport.)
Three addresses the chaotic current state and the massive potential of networked cars.
Four is particularly interesting to me. I wonder to what extent this income will simply subsidize car ownership or if it could actually transform cars into an investment (rather than purely an expense). Will people end up buying self-driving vehicles in the same way that people buy real estate for yield?
Furthermore, how does this notion of a shared vehicle pool now completely change the way we think about parking requirements. For instance, today we think about parking in terms of individual usage. This tenant requires/wants X amount of parking. All 2-bedroom apartments require Y amount of parking.
But if we’re now all sharing our vehicles, parking requirements would then be based on some broader and collective demand curve. Parking would become less individualistic and instead become more of a yard where self-driving vehicles come to store themselves when not in use.
Once again, we reach a point where utilization rates go up for each vehicle and overall parking demand goes down. Good thing we’re getting rid of parking minimums.
What else could you see happening?
I’m going through and dissecting Elon Musk’s second “Master Plan” this morning.
I love how he drops earth-shattering news in such a casual and honest way. Two days ago he tweeted that he was planning to pull an all-nighter to complete the “master product plan.” And then yesterday, he outlined his vision in a simple – and at times personal – blog post for how Tesla is going to change the world. It all feels very genuine.
Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
There are so many interesting snippets from the master plan, that I’m simply going to quote them all here. There’s lots to think about and discuss.
A reminder of the broader vision:
The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.
By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.
The solar roof and other electric vehicles that Tesla has in the pipeline:
Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.
In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.
Thoughts on self-driving vehicles:
Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.
The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.
Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.
Why an even lower cost vehicle (compared to the Model 3) may never be necessary:
You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.
And finally, Uber has a new competitor (that, to me, is a good thing):
In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.
I’ll provide my thoughts on all of the above in a subsequent post. I’m out of writing time for today.