Master of Coin Departs: A Look at Zachary Kirkhorn's Impact on Tesla

Yesterday Tesla announced that their CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn would depart

Tesla

In a surprising turn of events, Tesla's CFO, Zachary Kirkhorn, known to many as the 'Master of Coin', has announced his resignation. Like any business, small or large, people come and go. But this isn't an average person at a normal company. Kirkhorn was deep in the trenches from the early days of the little start-up electric car company, and his departure leaves us only to speculate what happened and what happens now both at Tesla and for Kirkhorn.

Tesla Today and into the Future

The short answer to what happens now is Kirkhorn will stay on until the end of the year; however, his responsibilities have been handed over to Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's Chief Accounting Officer since 2019 after joining the company in 2017 following the purchase of SolarCity.

Kirkhorn is going out with his head held high and still a true believer in Tesla's vision, as he is sticking around for four more months to help with the transition. In his LinkedIn post, which he only publicly posts about once a year, he said:

Being a part of this company is a special experience and I’m extremely proud of the work we’ve done together since I joined over 13 years ago.

Reason for Leaving is Unknown

There are no clues about what is next for Kirkhorn or why he is leaving. So, that would lead many to believe there must've been an issue at the top, Elon Musk. While that is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, both men seemed to be playing nice on social media. Kirkhorn stated on Linkedin, "I want to thank the talented, passionate, and hard-working employees at Tesla, who have accomplished things many thought not possible. I also want to thank Elon for his leadership and optimism, which has inspired so many people."

Musk posted on X.com, "I would like to thank Zach Kirkhorn for his many contributions to Tesla over the course of 13 often difficult years. Much appreciated, and best wishes for the next stage of his career."

Kirkhorn replaced Deepak Ahuja who left Tesla in 2019. Ahuja had been in the CFO role since 2010 the same year Kirhorn joined Tesla. Kirkhorn's rise through the ranks was both meteoric and pivotal. Serving in various capacities, including Senior Manager, Director, and Senior Director, he assumed the role of CFO in March 2019.

The Succession Plan

Succession at Tesla has been a concern for years, and it should be. We saw what happened when Musk bought Twitter and split his attention - the stock sank. We can only imagine what was happening behind the scenes. Still, when Musk committed to putting his attention back to Tesla, he implemented a hiring freeze and said all major personal decisions had to go through him.

Kirkhorn would've been on everyone's bingo card as a shortlist candidate to be the next CEO at Tesla, as his impact on the company's trajectory is indisputable. During his tenure, Kirkhorn played an essential role in transforming Tesla from a company fraught with losses to a consistently profitable enterprise. His expertise has been instrumental in Tesla's first quarterly profit, achieving a market valuation of over $1 trillion and strategizing the launch of products like Model 3 and the anticipated Cybertruck.

Kirkhorn's dedication to the company was undoubtedly monumental and likely far bigger than we will ever know, but he is replaceable. Just as we saw with the departure of Andrej Karpathy, the leader of the Full Self-Driving department, the company will continue. It's been a highly sought-after company for many bright minds to work at, and that kind of talent pool will help when the big players leave. But Tesla still has to come up with an answer for the succession plan for Elon Musk.

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Tesla Reveals How It Tests FSD - A Series of Videos

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has published a 16-post series covering a wide range of unique scenarios against which the company tests each FSD release. Tesla’s VP of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, also provided some additional context, which we’ll cover below.

These scenarios could be difficult for a regular driver to respond to and are a good demonstration of FSD’s capabilities. Let’s take a look at all the different scenarios that Tesla regularly tests against. According to Ashok, these tests are only one of 10 ways Tesla validates their software. These tests were done against FSD v12.5.6.3, the HW4 build that’s on approximately 20% of the fleet.

We’ve embedded each video below and also provided some additional information.

1. Reverse Cut-in (Occluded)

This first test is for a car reversing out of a parking space, while occluded (vision blocked) by another car or obstacle. In the test, the Model Y notices the incoming car and then brakes with space left over.

2. Peeking (Occluded)

In this video, it's hard to even spot the car on the right that’s “peeking” forward—it's occluded by bushes on the side of the road. FSD notices and stops in time to let the other vehicle safely pass.

3. Left Turn Cut-in

An incoming vehicle that takes a left turn to enter the same lane of travel as FSD - spotted, stopped, and then continuing smoothly. In the second shot, you can see FSD left a considerable amount of space to let the vehicle cut in.

4. Parallel Cut-in (Occluded)

This is honestly one of the most common scenarios on a highway - someone cuts in while obscured into your lane of travel. Once again, FSD does its thing with plenty of space to spare.

5. Yield for Oncoming During Overtake

FSD’s path planner plans an overtake around a stationary vehicle here, sees the oncoming traffic, and politely waits its turn to continue. This is another everyday scenario, especially on urban and suburban streets.

6. Stop Sign Right-of-Way Violator

There are a surprising number of people who don’t know how stop signs work. However, FSD does know how they work and also knows what to do if others act unpredictably. This is one of the best demonstrations of FSD’s capability to react quickly and effectively to unpredictable behavior on the roads.

7. Door Opening During Overtake

Another overtake scenario, but this time the vehicle being overtaken throws open its door into traffic. Not necessarily the wisest of moves, but humans are unpredictable. Good to see Tesla working to save its vehicles from both hitting the door or having the door hit with its new Blind Spot Monitoring While Parked feature.

8. Right Turn Harsh Braking

This scenario is another common one - someone is taking a right turn, and you expect them to complete the turn, but they go ahead and slam on the brakes. Here, FSD brakes in time - using Automatic Emergency Braking - and then continues safely. Tesla has been working to improve AEB and the scenarios it can react to - and these are all a part and parcel of FSD’s real-time and active safety features.

9. Left Turn Across Path

This one is pretty clean-cut - someone takes a left turn even though you’re on your way through the intersection. This particular accident is one of the most common - 53% of cross-path accidents involve a left turn through an intersection where a side impact will be lethal. FSD can make a big difference - over 8,000 people die in North America alone in this particular scenario.

10. Cut-Out to Static Cone

Here, FSD smoothly reacts to an object on the road as the vehicle ahead dodges it. We’d love to see this scenario done with different types of objects or debris, as this is another common item - especially with roadkill on country roads. A good demo of FSD’s collision avoidance maneuvers too!

11. Dynamic Debris (Dropped Cone)

Taking it one step further, FSD successfully notices, slows down, stops itself from hitting the bouncing cone, and then makes it around safely. If you’ve ever seen someone strap something down in the bed of a pickup and forget to say “This ain’t going anywhere” - this is that exact scenario.

12. U-Turn Cut-in (Occluded)

Another high-speed occluded cut-in, this time for a vehicle making a U-Turn from an oddly shaped intersection. FSD started braking the moment the first couple pixels of the Model Y were beyond the bush occluding vision. With a human’s reaction time, this would have resulted in a T-bone.

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Director of AI - mentioned that this is possible because of low latency and high intelligence - combined together, it enables FSD to make a threat assessment and decide what to do, very quickly. It also considers the potential of a rear-end collision - and there is collision avoidance baked into that decision-making.

13. High-Speed Cut-out to Stationary Vehicle

Similar to the cone cut-out, this one happens at 73mph (117km/h)! FSD sees the car dodging, notices there’s an obstacle, and moves out of the way without dropping speed.

14. High-Speed Harsh Braking

Another common scenario - in fact, the number one reason why pileups occur on highways is the harsh, sudden braking of vehicles in front. FSD once again notices and comes to a safe stop here.

15. High-Speed Stationary Child

Tesla has been previously greatly criticized for its ability to come to a safe stop for children playing on the road. Here, Tesla is demonstrating its capability of doing so - once again with highway speeds of 73mph. 

16. High-Speed Crossing Child

And to really make the point - it can do it with a crossing child too. Tesla has made a strong commitment to safety for vulnerable road users, and this is a good way to show how it works.

That’s a lot of unique scenarios that Tesla tests against - and each and every build has to be vetted against this huge list of different safety tests in order to ensure that the build that ends up in customer hands is as safe as possible. With FSD v13 looking like it's coming soon, we’re excited to see where this takes Tesla next. 

With Musk announcing that FSD v13 is coming soon, it really is starting to feel like Unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi could be pushed out sometime next year.

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Musk Confirms FSD V13 is Coming Soon

Not a Tesla App

Tesla announced an updated roadmap for FSD in late October. With it, they announced that FSD v13, the one that’s expected to make Unsupervised FSD feature complete (although not 100% reliable), would start being sent to employees by the end of the week.

We have yet to see any hints or sightings of employees testing FSD v13, but Elon Musk has now stated that FSD v13 is coming soon.

It sounds like Musk is talking about the employee release as it usually does, but it’s not immediately clear. Tesla originally predicted that select owners would receive FSD v13.3 around Thanksgiving.

Musk also mentioned that FSD v13 is trending to be about 500% better than the current build of v12.5.5.3 on the Cybertruck. If that’s true, Unsupervised FSD is just a regulatory leap away, rather than a technical or training challenge. However, let’s remember that Musk has often thrown out these vast improvement numbers that don’t appear to materialize when the update rolls out to customers. There’s no doubt that FSD v13 will be a big milestone and have several new features, such as Autopark at destination_, Unpark and more, but the much lower miles per intervention will likely come in later revisions.

Tesla has already seen drastic improvements this year, moving from V11.4.9 to v12.3.6, and then more recently to V12.5.4.2. Each successive build has had major improvements in how FSD is able to react and respond in real-time while also becoming smoother and safer.

We’re in for some exciting times as an even better FSD version makes its way to customers soon. And in order to really make the point, Tesla has also shown off how they conduct FSD Safety Testing in a series of videos, which we’ll include below.

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