Tesla, the company that CEO Elon Musk claims will “solve autonomy,” has a problem: It turns out autonomy is hard. The company is totally definitely introducing a fully autonomous robotaxi this year, for realsies, yet it can’t even figure out how to make its cars self-drive through the Vegas Loop — a tunnel Musk himself had built.
The Vegas Loop was introduced three years ago, with the intent of getting around all that pesky Las Vegas traffic, and has been marginally effective in that goal. It’s faster than walking, at least. Now, the company is looking to expand its domain beneath the Vegas streets, and claims that some level of autonomy is on the horizon before 2025 — but not, crucially, full self-driving. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The plan is to begin the early stages of autonomous driving within the system by the Tesla vehicles that are utilized in the system, Steve Hill, President and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority told the Review-Journal earlier this month.
“Hopefully this will get started just lightly, using a driver assistance tool by the end of this year,” Hill said.
There is still no timeline associated with when full autonomy will be implemented in the system, as the Boring Co. is in the process of expanding the tunneling of the Vegas Loop outward from the Las Vegas Convention Center loop.
This is a tunnel entirely under Musk’s control, built exclusively for Tesla vehicles to use, yet the company’s flagship software can’t handle it. No traffic, no pedestrians, no intersections, not even any real turns, yet it’s apparently still too much for FSD.
How can the software be ready for wide release as a subscription service, for drivers whose commutes do involve uncontrolled outside factors, if it can’t even handle a tunnel — the most controllable situation imaginable? Tesla has already backed off the claim that its older cars are FSD-ready, but it’s now tough to argue that even its current cars can really drive themselves. If Tesla doesn’t trust this software on a closed course, why should I trust it on the street?