https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731
It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019, per this article:
https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-dri...
This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.
No, that was NOT a verbatim quote. Here is the exact quote with me adding emphasis on the critical (but oft omitted) qualifier:
"All Teslas being produced right now have this computer. We switched over from the Nvidia solution for S and X about a month ago, and we switched over the Model 3 about ten days ago. All cars being produced have the all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for full self-driving. I'll say that again. All Tesla cars being produced right now have everything necessary for full self-driving. All you need to do is improve the software."
https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663
> This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.
That is, in my opinion, not a contextually correct reading of what Elon said. Within the context of the speech it's clear (to me) that for him, "robotaxi" is used as shorthand for "vehicles with the hardware capable of being a robotaxi." Obviously I cannot prove this, and I recognise that responsibility ultimately lies with Elon to be clear.
I do agree Elon did say multiple sentences that are absolutely misleading when read in isolation, but his actual words in context (and with some recognition that this is a forward looking statement made with optimism) were far less egregiously wrong than the snipped quote implies on its own. You can watch him say it in context and make up your own mind:
Same thing with the robotaxi quotes. Elon was very clear on autonomy day and the days surrounding it. The promise was not shorthand for "vehicles capable of being a robotaxi", it was Tesla vehicles, and I quote again, "operating robotaxis next year with no one in them", and "I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere.". You don't need regulatory approval for hardware alone.
In another investor presentation Elon Musk made in 2019, per a reporter covering it, they were promising the Tesla Network to allow Tesla owners to send their functioning robotaxis out to pick people up for money would launch in 2020.
> Starting next year, owners will be able to flip a switch inside the Tesla app, and send out their car to pick up and drop off passengers autonomously, earning an estimated 65 cents per mile in fares. By Tesla’s estimates, owners might be able to earn $30,000 in gross revenue from their cars per year, or more than $300,000 in revenue over the 11-year lifespan of their car.
Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.
To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not.
So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?
It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
Windows Vista and software in general are not even remotely comparable: they are not sold today with the promise of features tomorrow - they are generally sold when they're ready. Even pre-order games are usually refunded if they incur too huge delays or ship with significantly altered features (see Cyberpunk 2020).
Just like you can't be a little bit pregnant you can't have a little bit of FSD. You either have it or you don't. It's a boolean, and it's embedded in that word 'full'.
Okay, compare accuracy of MobileNet to ViT. ViT has 90.45% accuracy and 1.843Bn parameters and MobileNet has 79% with 5.47M parameters (2020, v3 is 75% with 5.4). [0]
These two networks are nowhere near equal. If you could put ViT on a phone and run real-time inference you would. But you can't, so you take a major cut in performance to get what you can.
There are multiple metrics you need to look at when evaluating networks. "Being able to perform on a dataset" is not even that useful of one.
[0] Have fun https://paperswithcode.com/sota/image-classification-on-imag...
Are you saying that the possibility is enough to prove they didn't cheat people?
If, some day, Tesla hypothetically says "we have determined it is technically possible to backport FSD, but we aren't gonna, because we like making money, not spending it" is that enough in your mind to demonstrate they didn't defraud anyone way back when?
Or do they actually have to make it run to fulfill the original promise?
That said, if it doesn't happened this year, it doesn't mean it will never happen.
The first problem they need to solve is FSD. If they can't solve FSD even with latest hardware, then well, that would be bad on its own.
The question is, what happens once they solve FSD, do they port? Maybe, I don't think it will be nearly as hard. Now realistically, it's probably cheaper to give free upgrades to everyone and not have to do the port. To me that feels fair, is like "hey, I promised you FSD on HW1, is gonna be a pain to port, but here, take this free HW upgrade", I'd be OK with that.
Now if they don't compensate HW1 users to some degree once FSD is solved, I do feel that would not be cool.
But my point here is that, we are jumping to conclusions, we don't know yet. We can't claim (yet) that FSD will or will not happen.
> "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
Yet the original "HW1" computer was replaced by "HW2", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 2.5", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 3".
If you want to activate the Full Self-Driving package today on a Tesla you just bought in early 2019, they'll tell you that your "FSD Computer 2.5" is not capable enough for even today's level 2 autonomy features, you first have to replace it with "FSD Computer 3". And if your car's a bit older, but still sold as "has the hardware needed for full self-driving", you have to pay $1000 for that upgrade before you can pay for the "full self-driving" that isn't self-driving.
How many times does Tesla have to claim the hardware is good enough, but then change their minds a year later, before any reasonable person stops believing them?