Ever since Tesla released its second generation Autopilot hardware and started offering an option called “full self-driving capability”, there’s been some confusion about Tesla’s plan for rolling out fully autonomous driving.

CEO Elon Musk has clarified the plans this week and now predicts that true level 5 autonomy is about 2 years away – though Tesla should still have advanced autonomous driving systems before that. expand full story

Tesla ran into troubles with some regulators and consumer watchdog groups this year over the use of the word ‘Autopilot’ to describe its advanced driver assist system. They expressed concerns that users would think it could mean the vehicles are autonomous. Tesla managed to successfully defend its position so far and always reiterated that the ‘Autopilot’ is named after the system used in aircraft and it doesn’t make them autonomous.

Now it seems Tesla is already having troubles with its new “full self-driving capability” feature which is not available yet, but Tesla is currently selling it anyway. expand full story

Yesterday, Tesla released two very interesting videos of the latest version of its self-driving technology on the new Autopilot 2.0 hardware. While they are fascinating to watch, they were both sped up. I think it’s worth revisiting the test with the video slowed down to real-time in order to really appreciate the level of autonomy Tesla achieved so far. expand full story

Late Friday night, Tesla released a second video demonstration of its new self-driving platform and this time, it included real-time feeds of what ‘Tesla Vision’, the automaker’s end-to-end image processing system, can see from the cameras. expand full story

NVIDIA reported its financial results for the last quarter yesterday and surprised Wall Street. The chip maker, which is now becoming an “AI company” according to its leadership, reported revenue of $2 billion on expectations of $1.7 billion and they also surpassed earnings expectations by a similar margin.

On a conference call with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang following the results, analysts were particularly interested in the company’s push in AI and the automotive industry, especially since Tesla’s started delivering every single one of its vehicles with NVIDIA’s Drive PX2 supercomputer.

Huang offered some very interesting insights into how he sees Tesla’s self-driving program playing out. expand full story

Tesla Model S and X vehicles with the new Autopilot and self-driving capable hardware, also known as ‘Hardware 2’ or ‘HW2’, are starting to roll off the assembly line in Fremont since Tesla’s announcement last month. Now vehicles are being spotted with the new hardware suite in the wild.

Consequently, it gives us our first look at the new sensors outside of Tesla’s press content. expand full story

As we reported last month, Tesla’s plans to bring self-driving cars to market without using LiDAR sensors are raising a few eyebrows. That’s because we have been told for years now by most people in the industry that it wasn’t achievable, but the company moved forward with its plans in a big way last month when it started producing all cars with a self-driving-ready hardware suite without LiDAR.

The Drive is now confusing quite a few people about Tesla’s strategy by claiming that the automaker is actually planning to use LiDAR in a new article titled: “Despite Public Stance, Musk Secretly Plans to Use LiDAR in Future Tesla Models: Ignore Musk’s tweets and what he’s said in earnings calls, a Tesla equipped with LiDAR is in the works.” (Update: the Drive has since changed its headline to nuance the claim)

But it’s actually not the case. Here’s why: expand full story

The announcement that Tesla is now equipping every car coming off its assembly line with what the automaker believes to be the necessary hardware to enable full self-driving capability has been met with skepticism among industry watchers and left the market mostly unimpressed.

Tesla’s stock price fell by 2% after the announcement, which indicates that the market either has doubts about Tesla achieving level 5 full autonomy with the new hardware or it doesn’t understand the implications of having full autonomous capabilities. The latter is unlikely considering the value of self-driving technology for automakers has been mostly understood for the past few years now.

The former is more likely the case here since we have been told that lidar sensors are required for full autonomy and redundancy ever since self-driving vehicle development has become mainstream in the industry, and Tesla is almost famously not using the laser-based sensor. expand full story

Tesla released a video demonstration of a Model X equipped with its latest self-driving sensor suite, which is going into Tesla’s vehicles right now, and using the most advanced version of the software, which will be pushed to owners gradually throughout the coming year. expand full story

As part of the reveal of his ‘Master Plan Part 2’, CEO Elon Musk elaborated on the automaker’s plan for the role of car ownership and ride-sharing in the future of the company.

Musk confirmed that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and it is approved by regulators (2 to 3 years based on his previous statements), the automaker plans for Tesla owners to be able to loan their car to a ‘shared autonomous fleet’ and make money while they are not using it. expand full story