Here’s the real story behind Tesla’s ‘staged’ self-driving video

Published

2 years ago

January 17, 2023

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There are a lot of media reports about Tesla having ‘staged’ or ‘faked’ a self-driving video in 2016 today after the testimony of a Tesla Autopilot executive was released, but here’s the full story.

In 2016, Tesla announced that all its vehicles going forward would be equipped with the hardware necessary to achieve full self-driving capability through software updates in the future.

Seven years later, Tesla has yet to deliver on that promise, but the company is still promising it and releasing software updates that bring the capability closer.

After making the announcement in 2016, Tesla released a video demonstration of its self-drivng technology.

The video showed a Model X driving by itself around the Bay Area for a few miles – navigating some stop signs and traffic lights before entering Tesla’s parking lot.

Here’s the full video:

[embedded content]

That was seven years ago, so why are we talking about it now?

Today, a lot of media reports are coming out with headlines about Tesla having “staged” or “faked” the video.

Those reports are all based on the testimony of Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, as part of the discovery for CEO Elon Musk’s trial brought by shareholders over claims that he misled them.

In his testimony, Elluswamy confirmed that Tesla used 3D mapping on a predetermined route to create the video. He also said that Tesla did the run multiple times and that the test drivers intervened on several occasions.

The engineer added:

“The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system.”

Elluswamy also confirmed that the Autopilot team put the video together as a “demonstration of the system’s capabilities” at the request of Musk.

There’s nothing really new here

We already knew that Tesla had to do all of that to create the video back in 2017.

In 2017, Tesla released its Disengagement of Autonomous Mode report with the California DMV and confirmed that it drove 550 autonomous miles in self-driving test vehicles with 168 disengagement events in 2016.

While the data was for the whole year of 2016, all of the miles were driven within the few weeks leading up to the demonstration video.

Tesla clearly didn’t have the capacity to release a self-driving system at the time because it had only just begun designing its own self-driving technology after stepping away from Mobileye’s driver assist system.

As we reported in 2017, Tesla ran a pre-determined route many times over in order for the system to be able to do it once without disengagement for the video.

There’s an argument that the video is indeed “staged” based on that, but the real thing in contention is that the video starts with Tesla saying this:

“The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

Some think that the comment is inaccurate, but the car is actually driving itself in the video, which is unedited. It’s just that it can’t do it off the lot. Tesla had to custom-build software and maps for it, but the automaker never claimed otherwise.

Electrek’s Take

I’m not sure why the media decided to run with those comments because they don’t really add anything new that we didn’t know since 2017.

It’s certainly not an ideal presentation of the video, but I also don’t think you can make the point that Tesla lied or was even misleading with the video. It was showing what it planned to achieve with its self-driving and that it could do it right now with some custom software. The video showed the car navigating this route by itself.

And, in fact, now Tesla could do this same route with an off-the-lot vehicle equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta.

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Environment

Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

Published

5 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Oil giant Saudi Aramco posts 15% drop in third-quarter profit but maintains dividend

Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal

Ahmed Jadallah | Reuters

Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported a 15.4% drop in net profit in the third-quarter on the back of “lower crude oil prices and weakening refining margins,” but maintained a 31.05 billion dividend.

The company reported net income of $27.56 billion in the July-September period, topping a company-provided estimate of $26.9 billion. The print is also a 5% drop from the previous quarter, which came in at $29.1 billion, as lower global oil prices, weaker demand and prolonged OPEC+ production cuts led by Saudi Arabia continue to impact crude prices.

The average selling price of oil for the second quarter of 2024 stood at $85 per barrel, but dropped to $78.7 per barrel during the third quarter, according to Saudi-based bank Al Rajhi capital, as non-OPEC supply volumes grew.

The oil firm said its year-on-year decline was partly offset by a “reduction in selling, administrative and general expenses primarily driven by a gain from derivative instruments, and a decrease in production royalties largely reflecting lower crude oil prices and a lower average effective royalty rate compared to the same quarter last year.”

Aramco’s dividend includes a base payout of $20.3 billion and an atypical performance-linked one of $10.8 billion. The Saudi government and the kingdom’s sovereign wealth vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, are the main beneficiaries of the dividend, holding stakes of roughly 81.5% and 16% in the company.

The remaining shareholding trades freely on Saudi Arabia’s Tadāwul stock exchange, with the company having finalized its second public share offering back in June.

Aramco’s earnings before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) came in at $51.45 billion in the third quarter, down 17% year-on-year. Aramco’s capital expenditure guidance was brought up 20% to $13.23 billion.

The company was trading at 27.45 riyals following the announcement, down 0.18% on the previous day.

The earnings align with a broader trend across oil majors, whose third-quarter profits have also suffered from declines in crude prices and refining margins. Aramco said it achieved average realized crude price of $79.3 per barrel in the third quarter, compared with $89.3 per barrel in the same period of last year.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter who produces roughly 9 million barrels per day of crude at present, serves as the de facto leader of the OPEC+ oil producers’ alliance, a subset of whom agreed over the weekend to delay a planned December output hike by one month.

OPEC chief says delayed December output hike is 'nothing unusual'

“Aramco delivered robust net income and generated strong free cash flow during the third quarter, despite a lower oil price environment,” CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement. “We also progressed our upstream developments, strengthened our downstream value chain, and advanced our new energies program as we continue to invest through cycles.”

The revenues will be a boon to the Saudi economy, which is currently undergoing a diversification process under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s legacy Vision 2030 scheme spanning a slew of high-cost infrastructure “gigaprojects.”

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance cut the kingdom’s growth forecast to 0.8% in 2024, in a steep decline from a previous projection of 4.4%, and raised the outlook for the national budgetary shortfall to roughly 2.9% of GDP, from a prior indication of 1.9%.

Environment

Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

Published

10 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla’s Cybertruck is now available in Canada – and, like in the US, there’s no waiting! Plus, we’ve got an “actually” smart summon Tesla that’s actually stuck, GM reaches a sales milestone, and we get a brand-new title sponsor!

Today’s episode is the first with our new title sponsor, BLUETTI – a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonusLucid proves than an EV company can keep its promises while Xiaomi teams up with Chevrolet and Honda to prove – at least conceptually – that records are made to be broken. audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

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Environment

This ‘supercharger on wheels’ brings fast charging to you [update]

Published

12 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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This 'supercharger on wheels' brings fast charging to you [update]

Mobile car care company Yoshi Mobility launched a DC fast charging EV mobile unit that it likens to “a supercharger on wheels.”

November 4, 2024 update: Yoshi Mobility will only be charging EVs on the side of the road now – it announced today that it’s selling its fleet fueling operation to EZFill Holdings (Nasdaq: EZFL).

It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer, mobile fueling business in 2016, but now it’s going to focus on mobile EV charging, virtual vehicle inspections for partners like Uber and Turo, and onsite preventative maintenance.

Bryan Frist, Yoshi Mobility’s CEO & cofounder, said, “By spinning off our fuel business and focusing all of our energy on solving hair-on-fire problems that fleet owners face, we are meeting the changing needs of enterprise customers while making the future of transportation safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.”

May 22, 2024: Yoshi Mobility saw that its existing customers needed mobile EV charging in places where infrastructure has yet to be installed, so the Nashville-based company decided to bring the mountain to Moses.

“We recognized a demand among our customers for convenient daily charging, reliable private charging networks, and proper charging infrastructure to support their fleet vehicles as they transition to electric,” said Dan Hunter, Yoshi Mobility’s chief EV officer and cofounder.

The company says its 240 kW mobile DC fast charger, which can turn “any EV” into a mobile charging unit, is the first fully electric mobile charger available. It can provide multiple charges in a single trip but doesn’t detail how they charge the DC fast charger or who manufactured it. (I asked for more details, and they replied that they won’t disclose client names or the manufacturer of its DC fast charger yet.)

Yoshi is launching its mobile charger on two GM BrightDrop Zevo 600s and will introduce additional vehicles throughout 2024. It aims for full commercialization by Q1 2025. (I wonder if the Zevo 600 ever charges itself? Yes, I asked that too.)

Yoshi Mobility says it’s already deployed its EV charging solutions to service “major OEMs, autonomous vehicle companies, and rideshare operators” across the US. Its initial customers are made up of large EV operators managing “hundreds” of light-duty vehicles requiring up to 1 megawatt of energy per day that don’t yet have grid-connected EV chargers. I’ve asked Yoshi for details of who it’s working with, and will update if they share that info.

The company says pricing is based on location and enterprise charging needs. Once under contract for service, the service will be deployed to US-based customers within 10 days.

To date, Yoshi Mobility has raised more than $60 million, with investments from GM Ventures, Bridgestone, ExxonMobil, and Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.

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