Elon Musk-approved Tesla Full Self-Driving dataset doubled: what’s the state of FSD now?
The Tesla Full Self-Driving crowdsourced dataset that Elon Musk has approved has doubled since the CEO shared it last month.
What does it say about the state of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving program now?
We have been complaining for years about Tesla’s lack of data on its Full Self-Driving program. In September 2024, Tesla started releasing monthly AI/self-driving roadmap updates and referenced improvements in some metrics that it wouldn’t even share.
Unsurprisingly, Tesla quickly stopped releasing the monthly updates after missing several milestones.
Because Tesla has not provided data, we have to rely on a less-than-ideal but better-than-nothing crowdsourced dataset.
Tesla fans often criticized the dataset because it doesn’t make the Full Self-Driving system look great, but it’s harder to do now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has positively referenced the dataset on two occasions.
The last time Musk referenced the data, he misrepresented it as confirming “exponential improvement” by singling out highway mileage.
This was data back when Musk referenced it last month:
Musk particularly praised the highway mileage of 723 miles between disengagement, which was a big jump over Tesla FSD v12, but we noted that this was misleading because v13 finally merged city and highway software stacks to include end-to-end neural nets.
This had been delayed for highway driving for years. Therefore, Musk was trying to make this update look like an “exponential improvement” when, in fact, it was simply Tesla finally using years of development in city driving and transferring it to highway driving, which was supposed to have happened a long time ago.
However, Musk’s approval of crowdsource data confirms that it is in the ballpark of what Tesla sees with FSD. Otherwise, it would be incredibly misleading for him to share it positively, even if he has misrepresented it to make it look positive.
When Musk shared the data, there were only 8,000 miles on the new FSD v13 update. Now, the crowdsource dataset has almost twice as many miles on Tesla FSD v13.
With more miles, the performance actually went down. Miles between disengagement on highway went from 723 to 624 miles.
Tesla’s primary metric has been “miles between necessary disengagement,” which is currently 489 miles.
The automaker previously claimed that v13 would bring “5 to 6x improved miles between necessary interventions” compared to v12.5.
The average of all v12.5 updates is at 183 miles. Therefore, it’s actually closer to a 2.7x improvement.
Where does Tesla need to go from there?
Ashok Elluswamy, the head of FSD at Tesla, has previously stated that for Tesla to enable unsupervised self-driving, Tesla needs to achieve the average in miles per critical intervention “equivalent of human miles between collision,” which stands at 700,000 miles, according to NHTSA.
Electrek’s Take
Yes, a 15,000-mile dataset is quite limited, but you FSD fans can’t complain since Elon bragged about it with just 8,000 miles.
500 miles sounds about right to me. It means that Tesla would need a 1,400x improvement to achieve the level of safety it said it needs to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
Anyone who thinks this is happening this year is kidding themselves.
However, I believe that Tesla is working around that. Elon said that Tesla is launching “unsupervised self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June,” and he confirmed that it will be done with “Tesla’s internal fleet.”
This means a Waymo-style geo-fenced autonomous ride-hailing system assisted by teleoperation – aka what Elon trashed for years and said that Tesla would easily surpassed with its approach.
You can deploy such a system with much lower miles between disengagement. Something like 10,000-20,000 miles is achievable, but the lower the mileage between disengagement, the messier it will be.
In a limited geo-fenced environment, Tesla could possibly achieve that by June in Austin.
The thing that Tesla fans need to understand is that this will only mean that Tesla will be where Waymo was years ago. It won’t get them closer to what Elon has been promising for years: unsupervised self-driving for the entire customer fleet built since 2016.
Tesla would need to scale like Waymo is, which Elon has been claiming is not scalable.
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Australia is the latest market to report a significant drop in Tesla sales for the first month of 2025, and in this case, the automaker can’t blame the Model Y changeover.
Earlier this week, we reported on European markets releasing car sales data for January, showing a massive drop in Tesla sales.
Tesla sold roughly half as many cars in Europe in January 2025 compared to January 2024.
Most industry watchers agree that there are two main reasons behind the sharp decline:
- Elon Musk’s meddling in politics and spreading misinformation on social media is driving people away from Tesla
- Tesla is transitioning Model Y production to the new design, which is affecting production and sales
Now, Australia is reporting its car sale numbers for January 2025, and it shows that Tesla is also having issues in this market.
In the first month of 2025, Tesla delivered only 739 vehicles – down 33% year-over-year.
This time, Tesla can’t blame the Model Y changeover as Model Y deliveries were actually up 20%.
Model 3 is the problem. Sales of Tesla’s cheapest model were down 63%.
This has been Tesla’s trend in Australia for the last year. In January 2023, Tesla delivered more than 2,000 vehicles in the country, but now it can only deliver a few hundred units. In 2024, Tesla’s sales dropped 17% for the whole year.
Electrek’s Take
At this point, it’s fairly clear that Tesla’s sales will be abysmal in Q1. Tesla will use the excuse of the Model Y changeover, and it will undoubtedly be partly true, but I think the Elon effect is also be a significant part of Tesla’s sales problem.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to calculate, but in the case of Australia, we can see that it’s part of the problem with the model breakdown.
Australia is not a huge car market and it won’t have a major impact on Tesla, but the trend appears to be similar in most markets.
The US is the biggest wildcard, as Elon still has a lot of fans there, obviously. US data is a bit more opaque and it will take a while for us to see an impact, if any.
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Southern California Edison acknowledges videos suggest link between equipment and Eaton fire
After ending its planned EV merger with Honda, Nissan is now on the hunt for a new partner to help it recover. To survive the industry’s shift to electric, software-defined vehicles, Nissan could turn to Apple supplier Foxconn.
Nissan looks past Honda for new EV partners
At a board meeting on Wednesday, Nissan decided to move on from the EV merger with Honda. The sudden change comes after Honda reportedly wanted more control over the partnership.
According to sources close to the matter, Nissan is now searching for new partners. Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida met with Honda’s head honcho on Thursday morning (via Financial Times), confirming plans to end merger talks.
With a combined market cap of around $58 billion, the alliance would have created the world’s fourth-largest auto group.
The merger with Honda fell apart after the company told Nissan that the new offer, which would make them a subsidiary, was “take it or leave it.” Honda is reportedly worried about Nissan’s turnaround plans and accused them of moving too slowly on their restructuring plans.
Nissan announced plans to reduce its workforce by about 9,000 and 20% of global production as part of its turnaround strategy.
Last year, Nissan’s global production fell 9%, with every region except Mexico seeing significantly less output. China led the way, with production slipping 14.7%, followed by the US (-13.3%), the UK (-12.6%), and Japan (-8.6%).
Two sources said Nissan’s new partners could include tech leaders outside the EV and automotive industry. Several board members also discussed a partnership with Apple supplier Foxconn.
Foxconn already met with Renault, which owns 36% of Nissan, about buying a part of its stake in the Japanese automaker. The interest sparked the initial talks between the two companies. Jun Seki, chief strategy officer at Foxconn’s EV business, worked at Nissan for 33 years, rising up the ranks to become the number three senior executive.
Nissan and Honda declined to comment, saying they expect a final decision by mid-February. Foxconn also had no comment on a potential partnership. Both companies are set to report earnings next week, so we will likely find out more.
Can Foxconn or another tech partner help Nissan turn things around? Drop us a comment below and let us know your thoughts.
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