A Friday night cruise with Elon Musk has shown the world just how far Tesla’s Full Self-Driving has advanced and gave viewers a preview of real-world problems. To take a line from Rob Zombie, the latest iteration of FSD may be "More Human Than Human," which could be an issue.
"Nothing but net!" proclaimed Musk as he live-streamed to X.com, a video with more than 42 million views. The Tesla CEO referred to neural nets, the technology underpinning Version 12 of FSD. Tesla is removing 300,000-plus lines of code running the current FSD and is now relying on the car's neural networks to drive the car in V12.
Driving through Palo Alto, California, Musk, with Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Software, sitting shotgun, picked random places for the Model S to drive to, and it did so smoothly and almost perfectly.
Technology Behind FSD
The test drive started with a construction zone, which was easily handled, but interestingly, at the end of the cones, the car wasn’t jerking over to find a lane immediately. Instead, like a confident human driver, it easily made its way to the lane with no oncoming traffic. We also watched as it effortlessly navigated speed bumps, roundabouts, pedestrians, bicyclists, and, of course - traffic.
For those who have had successful drives with FSD, you may be thinking, what's the big deal? Musk underscored that this version of FSD does not rely on hard-coded programming or a constant internet connection to function. All necessary inference occurs locally, a significant departure from previous versions.
“This is all nets, baby, nothing but net,” Musk exclaimed, emphasizing the vehicle’s dependency on machine learning rather than programmed instructions. The software operates at full frame rate, taking eight cameras at 36 frames per second to decide what to do. No line of code tells the car what to do at an intersection, on the highway or around other vehicles.
The software was impressive to watch, with its countless improvements over the current V11 version of FSD. Musk's vehicle kept a reasonable speed throughout the drive, even though Autopilot was set to a maximum speed of 85 mph.
When Musk reached his destination, the vehicle also automatically pulled over to the side of the road to park itself instead of just stopping in the middle of the road like it does today.
The Real-World, Real Person Challenge
Instead, Tesla has shown the car countless videos of real-world driving so that it will learn what to do in those situations. But that has caused a problem. As the car noticeably did not come to full stops, Musk explained the challenge posed by the fact that less than 0.5% of drivers come to a complete stop at stop signs.
This makes it incredibly difficult to program the vehicle with such sparse data on people obeying the law. This lack of data highlights Tesla's obstacles in training its AI systems to operate in real-world scenarios where human drivers frequently do not adhere to the rules.
Musk's FSD V12 Stream in 10 Minutes
Watch the highlights of Musk's 45-minute video stream below.
Regulatory Hurdles
This appeared in a few other instances where the car behaved like a confident driver, not endangering anyone but technically breaking the rules of the road. FSD suddenly went from the nervous teenager learning to drive to a good driver. But we know how the NHTSA feels about Tesla not following the rules.
In February, the watchdog issued a recall stating that Tesla was acting too human — I mean not following the rules. It cited FSD Beta software:
Traveling or turning through certain intersections during a stale yellow traffic light;
The perceived duration of the vehicle’s static position at certain intersections with a stop sign, particularly when the intersection is clear of any other road users;
Adjusting vehicle speed while traveling through certain variable speed zones, based on detected speed limit signage and/or the vehicle’s speed offset setting that is adjusted by the driver.
Yes, I’m sure we all stop at every yellow light, come to a complete stop at every stop sign, and never go over the speed limit.
Kudos to Tesla and Musk for this real-world demonstration, and if there was any speculation that it was rigged, Musk did have to intervene at an advanced left-hand signal. This small glitch, Musk reassured, could be addressed with further training and data collection. There will be a lot of training announced Tesla’s commitment to invest $4 billion over the next two years in training computing, signaling the company's dedication to perfecting this groundbreaking technology.
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It was a rainy April 1st when a news-searching author went on a delve into the depths of April Fools to find fact from falsehood. And while we found a lot of fantastic jokes, we also found some good ideas.
So, with a shoutout to MarcoRP on X, whose April Fool’s Joke gave us a good run for our money for a couple of minutes, we thought to ourselves - what would a Cybercab Charging Station / Cleaning Hub really look like?
Cybercab Wireless Charging Sites
Now, before continuing, we’d like to point out that the image up top is a joke from Marco - it isn’t an accurate or real site map submission from Tesla. However, it gave us the impetus to think critically about what is required for a Robotaxi fleet, based primarily on the Cybercab, to be able to service a city.
Requirements
Tesla will likely need to charge a small fleet of Cybercabs at a single time and in a single place. That means that the site needs to be large enough to cover a major metro area while also still being compact enough to not cost too much money to build out.
In addition, we need to factor in charge times. The Cybercab is likely to launch with a battery around 50 kWh, which will result in a range of approximately 300 miles. With that much range, the average Cybercab may not need to charge more than once or at all during daytime shifts, so instead, most of the vehicles will charge overnight.
MarcoRP
Math and Charge Times
The overnight charging means that most of these vehicles could be charged slowly. When we did some back-of-the-napkin math last year, we determined that Tesla’s wireless charger will likely peak around 17 kWh (for comparison, Tesla’s Wall Connector at 32 amps charges at about 7 kWh). If we scale Tesla’s wireless charger down slightly to 10 kWh, accounting for some energy loss and the potential size of the site, that means a Cybercab will be able to charge in about 5 hours.
Tesla’s upcoming V4 Supercharger unit can currently handle 1.5MW per cabinet, but this slower-speed charging is A/C, not DC, which means there is a step-down loss of about 3-5%. Let’s make that a comfortable 10% for any other overages, but we can estimate around 1.35MW of power. That 1.3MW will easily handle charging up to 100 Cybercabs at once - all wirelessly, using Tesla’s unique beam-forming and beam-steering technology to keep efficiency high at every single stall.
Within about 5 hours, a whole fleet of 100 Cybercabs could be charged overnight when electricity rates are cheaper and still be out in time for the morning commute.
While this is all just hypothetical, it really does make sense that Tesla will be establishing these sites that won’t require much space or a ton of energy.
Tesla recently curtained off a large section of the parking garage at Giga Texas, as well as some of their chargers on the eastern end of the facility, leading us to believe they may just be testing this at scale internally.
There’s a lot to look forward to with Tesla’s V4 Supercharger deployment coming this year and with Robotaxi launching in just a couple of months.
Tesla released its Q1 2025 delivery and production numbers this morning, reporting 336,681 vehicles delivered and 362,615 produced—marking the company’s weakest quarter since 2022. Deliveries declined 13% year-over-year and fell well short of Wall Street estimates, which ranged from 360,000 to 370,000. Some analysts had forecast as many as 407,000 units.
Despite the shortfall, Tesla stock is actually up about 4% this morning, not only suggesting the market had already priced in weaker performance, but that this may be seen as the low point for the company. Tesla began delivering its refreshed Model Y in March, and production across all four Gigafactories was impacted by several weeks of downtime as Tesla retooled lines to accommodate the newer model. However, there’s no doubt that there is some brand impact from Elon Musk.
Comparing Numbers
Most of the deliveries—323,800 units—came from the Model 3 and Model Y lineup, while the “Other Models” category (including the Cybertruck, Model S, and Model X) accounted for 12,881 deliveries. That’s a 31% drop for Model 3/Y and a sharper 45% drop for the Other Models category compared to the previous quarter. However, comparing it to a more applicable Q1 2024, these numbers are only down about 13% for the Model 3/Y and down about 24% for the Model S/X and Cybertruck.
In terms of production, Tesla built 345,454 Model 3/Y vehicles and 17,161 from its “Other Models” line. The company attributed the production drop to the Model Y changeover but said the ramp is “going well.” This still leaves a large gap between production and delivery numbers, although they may not be as large as many had feared.
Q1 2025
Q1 2024
Q4 2024
Model 3/Y Deliveries
323,800
369,783
471,930
Model 3/Y Production
345,454
412,376
436,718
Other Models Deliveries
12,881
17,027
23,640
Other Models Production
17,161
20,995
22,727
Total Deliveries
336,681
386,810
495,570
Total Production
362,615
433,371
459,445
Cybertruck
One major weak point in Tesla’s numbers seems to be Cybertruck deliveries. While Tesla previously expected the Cybertruck to sell more than 250k units per year, we’re already seeing a decline in numbers. This is likely due to several factors, including the higher-than-expected price point of the truck, the unavailability of the RWD model, and the Cybertruck’s polarizing design, which may attract unwanted attention right now.
While the Cybertruck was ramping up production in 2024, making the lower numbers reasonable, the deliveries for Q1 2025 dropped drastically compared to the previous quarter. Cybertruck deliveries are estimated to be in the 5- 6k unit range for the quarter.
The good news to take away here is that the Single Motor variant of the Cybertruck appears to be nearing release. The price of the RWD version is expected to be about $60k USD before any incentives.
Q1 Earnings Call
Tesla announced their quarterly numbers this morning and posted on social media that they’ll live stream their Earnings Call on April 22nd.
This post was later edited to change “Q1 Earnings Call” to “Q1 Company Update.” It’s not clear whether there’s any significance in this change, but it could mean that Tesla has more to announce during the call.
The Company Update will occur on April 22nd at 2:30 PM PT / 5:30 PM ET. The standard Q&A session with executives and Musk is expected to follow the release of additional financial results for the quarter.
Tesla is set to launch its long-awaited Robotaxi service in June, and a cheaper, mass-market model is also planned for this year. With delivery numbers coming in soft and the refreshed Model Y just hitting the road, all eyes will be on forward-looking commentary during the update.
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