Tesla has recently commented on the development of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology and the U.S. regulatory framework. This comes after the company’s rollout of FSD (Supervised) and its announcement of plans to launch a long-awaited robotaxi later this year.
Some had assumed that navigating the regulatory framework for FSD and other semi-autonomous driving systems would be the most challenging aspect, but two Tesla executives have emphasized the difficulty of developing such software. CEO Elon Musk shared his thoughts, acknowledging the immense challenge of making generalized self-driving work and the significant investments in training compute, data pipelines, and video storage.
He mentioned that Tesla’s cumulative investment in these areas this year will exceed $10 billion but believes that the software’s potential revenue will far outweigh this cost. Another Tesla executive, Rohan Patel, Vice President of Policy and Business Development, also discussed the difficulty of developing FSD.
Patel emphasized the need to change the regulatory frameworks and fundamental mindset surrounding autonomous driving while highlighting the role of technological advancements in driving these changes forward. In summary, both Musk and Patel have underscored the complexity and investment required to advance FSD technology and emphasized the need for regulatory and mindset shifts alongside technological advancements.