Elon Musk’s language about Tesla’s self-driving is changing
The language used by Elon Musk about Tesla’s self-driving effort is changing, and it is muddying the timeline for the automaker to deliver on its promise.
Musk use to make statements that made him sound supremely confident that Tesla could soon deliver a self-driving system and virtually all vehicles the automaker produced since 2016 through a software update.
During Tesla’s Autonomy Day in 2019, he made so many comments that promised that Tesla would achieve full self-driving capabilities that we were able to produce a video of three straight minutes of Musk promising Tesla delivering a self-driving system:
As you can see in this video, Musk was talking about “robotaxis” and “not having to touch the steering wheel” or even not needing to “look out the window” at the time.
He was also talking about Tesla delivering those capabilities in 2020.
Two years later, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Capability, or FSD, is still in beta – it requires the driver to be attentive at all times, and system disengagements are quite frequent.
Tesla is not only behind Musk’s schedule to deliver on the system, but now Musk has been changing the goalpost lately.
The CEO has already stopped talking about the biggest promises, like “1 million robotaxis by the end of the year.” Instead, he has been talking about a wider release of Tesla’s FSD Beta, which again is extremely far from a robot taxi service.
Now during a conference call following the release of Tesla’s Q3 2022 financial results, Musk is again being much more careful about the language he uses around Tesla’s self-driving effort.
He again talked about a wider release of FSD Beta:
This quarter, we expect to go to wide release of Full Self-Driving Beta in North America. So, anyone who has ordered a Full Self-Driving package will have access to the FSD beta program this year, probably about a month from now.
But where things got dicey was when Musk was directly asked by an analyst when will Tesla deliver a level 4 or level 5 self-driving system. Those are the levels where drivers don’t have to pay attention.
Musk’s answer was vague, to say the least, and the comment was much weaker than his previous promises:
Well, there’s this debate of what’s the interventions per mile and maybe safety interventions per mile. Like we’re not saying that that’s quite ready to have no one behind the wheel. It’s just that you will almost never have to touch the control, vehicle controllers. So, like when I came to Giga Texas from a friend’s house today, I never touched any of the controls already here.
And then there is a longer process called the march of 9s, which is how many 9s reliability do you need before you could really be comfortable saying that the car could drive with no one in it? And there’s some subjectivity as to how many 9s you need. But I think we’ll be pretty close to having enough 9s that you’re going to have no one in the car by the end of this year. And certainly, without a question, that’s in my mind next year.
The CEO then added that Tesla plans to have an FSD update next year that will be used to “show to regulators that the car is safer than the average human.”
Electrek’s Take
Musk is obviously being more careful in his choice of words, but he is still talking about Tesla achieving level 4 or 5 next year.
The most frustrating part is that he obviously doesn’t have much credibility when it comes to this timeline anymore, but he keeps justifying this prediction by saying “you just have to look at the performance of Tesla FSD beta.”
My experience with FSD Beta certainly doesn’t suggest that, but some have had better experiences, especially in California, where there are more owners to train the system.
However, talking to the more unbiased FSD Beta testers, I found it hard to see a clear path to Tesla achieving level 4 or 5 autonomy within the next year.
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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