Head of Autopilot Tesla: Musk’s claims about autopilot progress are unrealistic
The head of Autopilot Software at Tesla, CJ Moore, told California’s Highways Department that Elon Musk’s claim that Tesla will achieve L5 autonomous driving by the end of the year “doesn’t match the reality of the technology.”
The legal nonprofit PlainSite requested the minutes of the conversation, which took place on March 9, between the California Department of Motor Vehicles and Tesla through a WOB request. The sentence “Elon’s tweet does not correspond to the reality of the technology” has been removed, but can be read with a copy-paste in another document.
The ruling is in response to, according to the report, being asked to “respond from an engineering perspective to reports from Elon of L5 capability by the end of the year.” It is therefore not entirely clear to which statements Musk is referring to. According to The Register, it is a Twitter Conversation between @comma_ai and Musk around the turn of the year. In it, Musk said “Tesla Full Self-Driving will operate at a safety level well above that of the average driver this year, I am confident of that.”
Moore goes on to say that Teslas are currently on L2 autonomy. To get to higher levels, the cars should be able to travel 1 to 2 million miles per driver for every intervention that the driver has to do. Tesla does not mention in the conversation how much distance is now covered per intervention. Musk would have extrapolated the current upward trend in autopilot development to arrive at his position.
An important point seems to be that Elon Musk does not speak specifically about L5 autonomy, but about ‘a level of safety compared to the average driver’. The tweet from comma to which Musk responds does speak of L5 self driving. The Tesla foreman did not respond to comma’s invitation to make a bet.
Level 5 autonomy in self-driving cars is the highest level. In this, the human driver does not have to serve as a possible fallback point for the control of the car. The car must be able to take itself everywhere under all circumstances, within reasonable limits.