Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 4]

This is part 4 of our transcript of Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update. You can read the part 1 and part 2 for Musk’s opening statement and part 3 is the first part of the Q&A. Now part 4:

Alex Roy – The Drive

Hello everyone how are you? Would have the improvements in Autopilot 8 mitigated or saved Josh Brown’s life?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO

We believe it would have. 

Alex Roy – The Drive

So the truck would have been seen by the radar only and braking would have been engaged?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO

These things cannot be said with absolute certainty, but we believe it is very likely that yes, it would have. The reason is that it would see a large metal object  across the road and knowing that there’s no road sign, there’s no overhead road sign, in that position, therefore it would not be a whitelisted situation and probability would be assessed as high and so it would brake.

Daniel Sparks – The Motley fool

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Initially when you guys launched Autopilot you mentioned that fleet learning happens in real-time and I was just wondering if we can get an update on this – if that’s still the case and if it is specifically the case with radar?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO

Yes, it is happening in real-time. The degree at which we are able to make changes to the fleet learning, like when we should pay attention and when we shouldn’t, what constitute an exceptionally significant number of events to register as something that require actuation and what degree of actuation, these things  are all refined over time. It’s both the data and the way that data is use by the car. What algorithms we use with the data? Those things are both improving rapidly over time.

They have a multiplying effect. It’s sort of like the data multiply by the quality of the algorithms and the data is increasing rapidly and the quality of algorithms increase rapidly so it ends up the area under the curve of those two things. It’s really quite dramatic over time.

David Undercoffler – Automotive News

Yes thanks for taking my call. Elon, I was wondering whether your relationship with Mobileye has officially ended and if so, is this all developed in-house and will future updates also be developed in-house?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO

This is all developed in-house. I prefer not to comment specifically on the Mobileye relationship, but this was all done in-house. This is all Tesla software.

Michael Ballaban – Jalopnik

Hey Elon, thanks for taking this question. Yesterday you tweeted that it had been an unusually difficult couple of weeks. Was that just a reference to the SpaceX launch pad fire or was there something else going on?

Elon Musk – Tesla CEO

It’s just been a lot. We are still getting a lot of flak for the whole SolarCity thing which I think is unreasonable and you know, there’s a lot effort on the Autopilot, on the Model 3 development and getting the factory for the Model 3, and then the rocket exploding… [pause] … the worst few weeks ever really.

You can read part 5 here: Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 5]