Tesla is about to hold an “Autonomy Investor Day” today at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The event was slated to start at 2PM ET (but is running a little late), and you can watch it above or at this link. The event comes two days before Tesla is due to report its financial performance for the first quarter of 2019, during which it is expected that the company will post a loss for the first time since the second quarter of 2018. The company has been pretty tight-lipped about what exactly it plans to show off at the event, though it’s likely Tesla will offer some kind of update on its efforts to bring a “full self-driving” version of Autopilot into the world — a controversial and often confusing term that the company often employs. Broadly, the event will feature a “deep dive into [Tesla’s] self-driving technology and road map,” and investors will “be able to take test-drives to experience [Tesla’s] Autopilot software first-hand, including features and functionality that are under active development.” The event is investor-focused, but Musk loves a show CEO Elon Musk said in February that he was “certain we’ll release full self-driving this year” after Tesla removed the feature from its website last October amid concerns that it overstated the autonomous abilities of the company’s vehicles. He first announced the company was equipping its cars with the tech required to enable “full self-driving” back in 2016, though that promise has changed in the intervening years, and Musk now admits that new hardware will be required to pull off the feat — all while some experts argue Musk’s refusal to use lidar sensors means Tesla’s cars will never be able to drive themselves. Musk recently said the event will “free investors from the tyranny of having to drive their own car.” Tesla (and / or Musk) could also share more about the company’s desire to turn its cars into shareable vehicles. Musk has said the ultimate goal for Autopilot is to allow owners to rent out their cars to other people who need a ride, though it’s unclear if or when the company’s technology will ever get to this point. One thing we do know is that the man loves a show, so even though the event is investor-focused, there’s a good chance of some surprises. Tesla has spent years improving the Autopilot driver assistance feature by adding new capabilities via over-the-air software updates. Most recently, the company rolled out a feature called Navigate on Autopilot that enables Tesla’s cars to automatically change lanes and take a driver from on-ramp to off-ramp on the highway. The company has also been teasing a feature that would let Tesla owners “summon” their cars in a parking lot, meaning the car would drive itself to them. Last week, a Tesla critic and short-seller spotted the company filming what appeared to be a Model 3 drive that might be shown off during today’s demo. (Over the weekend, Tesla was granted a restraining order against that person, both for following the company’s Model 3 while it was driving in the Bay Area and for allegedly performing a hit-and-run at the company’s Fremont, California factory in February.)<doc-sep>As part of Tesla’s presentations about their progress toward full self-driving, the automaker unveiled its ‘Robotaxi’ plan for a self-driving ride-sharing network with its electric cars to be activated as soon as next year with an over-the-air software update. Today, Tesla is holding an ‘Autonomy Day’ for investors during which it has made several presentations about its effort to bring to market a full self-driving system. We posted an article on Pete Bannon’s presentation about Tesla’s new Full Self-Driving computer. which CEO Elon Musk claims is ‘objectively the best chip in the world’. You can visit our Tesla Autonomy Event news hub for all coverage of the series of presentations and announcements made by the automaker at the event today. Musk’s own presentation focused on Tesla’s timeline to bring a full self-driving to market and the ‘Tesla Network’, the company’s plan for a shared fleet of Robotaxi vehicles. The CEO believes that Tesla will have developed the software for all the features required to achieve a full self-driving system by the end of the year. He emphasized that this version system will still require driver attention, which doesn’t really make it self-driving, but he expects that it will stop requiring driver attention by Q2 2020. From there, Tesla will be working with regulators to have the system approved as a self-driving system that doesn’t require driver supervision. The timeline for that will depend on the regulators in different jurisdictions, but Musk said that he is confident it will happen in at least one market by the end of next year. Once that happens, Tesla plans to enable its Robotaxi network with an update to its existing mobile app. On the app, Tesla owners will be able to add their cars to the shared fleet to earn money or summon an autonomous Tesla vehicle to pick them up and bring them to a destination: Musk dove deep into the economics of such a fleet — both from Tesla’s perspective and from the perspective of a Tesla owner. As we previously reported, now all new Tesla vehicles are equipped with what Musk believes is all the hardware necessary to achieve full self-driving through future software updates. He estimates that Tesla will have over a million of those vehicles on the road by the end of next year — around the time they start activating full self-driving capability: When the cars are fully autonomous, he estimates that they have a value of ~$200,000 when part of the self-driving network. Considering Tesla is selling those cars starting at less than $50,000, Musk claimed that consumers should think hard about self-driving when buying any other car than a Tesla since they are the only company offering a vehicle, which they claim will eventually be full self-driving. He said: “It is financially insane to buy anything else than a Tesla.” Musk argues that a Model 3 used as a robotaxi could generate about $30,000 in gross profit per year: Musk expects the economics to improve over time as Tesla deploys more efficient vehicles and reduces the cost of operation per mile. Electrek’s Take That’s the holy grail of mobility: a shared-fleet of all-electric self-driving vehicles. But that’s the easy part of the equation. Delivering a fully self-driving system capable to drive safer than a human in any condition is obviously the most difficult part and Tesla did a pretty convincing job in trying to explain how they will deliver such a system over the next year in the other presentations throughout the day. I am still on the “I’ll believe it when I see it” side, but I have to say that I feel a lot better about having bought the Full Self-Driving package on my Tesla after watching today’s presentations. What about you? Let us know what you think in the comment section below. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast.<doc-sep>Tesla is holding an event today called ‘Tesla Autonomy Investor Day’ at its headquarters in Palo Alto. Follow along here to get all the details about what is being announced. The automaker claims to be making a lot of progress in developing its fully self-driving software and it plans a ‘deep dive’ to give everyone a deep dive today: “Tesla is making significant progress in the development of its autonomous driving software and hardware, including our FSD computer, which is currently in production and which will enable full-self driving via future over-the-air software updates. With a number of very exciting developments coming in the weeks and months ahead, Tesla will host investors on the morning of April 19th at our headquarters in Palo Alto to provide a deep dive into our self-driving technology and road map.” Throughout the day, Tesla will give investors test-drives to experience the latest Autopilot software first-hand, “including features and functionality that are under active development.” Tesla will also livestream a presentation about its self-driving technology and road map, which is expected to include remarks from Elon Musk, as well as VP of Engineering, Stuart Bowers, VP of Hardware Engineering, Pete Bannon, and Sr. Director of AI, Andrej Karpathy. It will be available on YouTube below starting at 11 AM local (PT) or 2 PM ET: Tesla Autonomy Event news hub Here we are going to link to our articles based on all the news coming out of the ‘Tesla Autonomy Investor Day’: We are also going to provide smaller updates directly in the article if necessary. You can also watch the last episode of our podcast (embedded below) to know what we expect will be announced at ‘Tesla Autonomy Investor Day’ and the implications for the company going forward. Updates: 2:20 PM: the stream is playing B-roll footage and Tesla is about 20 minutes late… so everything is normal. the stream is playing B-roll footage and Tesla is about 20 minutes late… so everything is normal. 2:24 PM: there are some cool new images in that B-roll though: 4:08 PM: the presentations are still going on. We are starting to post articles based on those presentations. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast.<doc-sep>
Tesla has released new self-driving demo video based on its latest software working on its new Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer. Today, Tesla was holding an ‘Autonomy Day’ for investors during which it has made several presentations about its effort to bring to market a full self-driving system. We posted an article on Pete Bannon’s presentation about Tesla’s new Full Self-Driving computer. which CEO Elon Musk claims is ‘objectively the best chip in the world’. You can visit our Tesla Autonomy Event news hub for all coverage of the series of presentations and announcements made by the automaker at the event today. After all the presentations, Tesla gave demo rides of its self-driving software powered by the new FSD computer to investors present at the Autonomy day. Tesla later released a video of the new self-driving demo: The video features a loop with some autonomous driving on the highway and other roads as well as a few intersections – things that Tesla’s version of Autopilot currently available to owners can’t handle. The actual driving capabilities are similar to the self-driving demo Tesla released back in 2016, but it is packaged more like Tesla’s current Autopilot features. Tesla also appears to have built new graphics to render the vehicle’s environment on the center screen: In this screenshot, we can see the vehicle’s path highlighted in blue on the screen, which is not the case with Autopilot. The render of the vehicle itself also appears to be different. The angle is further back the render doesn’t show as far out in front of the car as it currently does with Autopilot. In this still image from the video, we can see the rendering showing an intersection on the screen – another thing that the current version of Autopilot can’t do. Other than that, the self-driving system is extremely similar to Tesla’s current Autopilot. On the highway, the capability appears similar to Tesla’s current Navigate on Autopilot and the main difference is that it doesn’t prompt the driver to apply pressure on the steering wheel. Let us know in the comment section below if you spot other differences. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast.