Elon Musk Says Tesla FSD Driving Beta Landing On July 9

Elon Musk has been talking up the new self-driving beta since last September. The FSD 9 beta as it is called officially, was unleashed to a select few last December and since then it has been progressing well. Tesla also announced that it was ditching radars on its cars and will unveil a new self-driving system fully dependent on computer vision called Tesla Vision. This FSD is the beta version of this system which has been in the skunkworks for a while. 

Musk, however, has been tweeting about it left, right and centre, although he never said when the beta would be coming to more users. For the first time, he has committed to a date. On Twitter, replying to a user he revealed July 9, Friday, midnight California time. Of course, Teslas aren't sold in India, but as per Indian time, that would be sometime close to noon on Saturday.

Dang you @elonmusk I was trying to go to bed. Now I can't sleep until Saturday

— Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) July 8, 2021

This comes after Musk admitted that self-driving was harder than he envisioned. Tesla has been touting its polarising AutoPilot feature as self-driving while it has caused many accidents in the real world. Internally, though, it isn't considered to be anything beyond level 2 autonomous tech. Tesla is hoping that this new FSD beta which has been trained on a supercomputer called DOJO will make a massive leap. 

Tesla has unveiled another supercomputer that it believes could be the 5th fastest in the world which will be the basis for the training of the computer vision system for Tesla Vision which will admonish the use of radars and will be fully dependent on sensors and cameras on its vehicles. Teslas don't use advanced devices like LiDARs which Musk has repeatedly say are not scalable because of costs. 

The new Model S debuts the new user interface 

Tesla FSD updates are often shared by Salesforce chief digital evangelist, Vala Afshar, who shares screenshots and updates on how well the system is working. It has been claimed that Tesla has achieved parity using AI techniques and computer vision with systems that have LiDARs.

Tesla has also revealed that the “mind of car” user interface seen in the new Tesla Model S Plaid models will be coming to its other vehicles as well.