The self-driving technology found in Tesla cars is one of the highest tech systems in the car industry. It is a system that is capable of fully autonomous driving even though due to government regulations Tesla had to restrict the system to be semi-autonomous as of now, but the cars are ready for full self-driving when in the future, governments will finally lift the ban. The company constantly keeps updating their vehicles through over-the-air updates. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said that he is testing Tesla’s latest alpha build of the company’s self-driving system and claims that he can “almost go from his house to work without intervention”. Musk stated that the goal is to achieve a “feature complete” full self-driving by improving on the current version of the autopilot through software updates.
Tesla has however missed a few previous deadlines related to the Autopilot system and self-driving, this has made Tesla owners somewhat skeptical about the company keeping its promises, and Tesla is under high pressure as the year-end is approaching fast.
We Can Almost Go From House to Work with No Intervention with Tesla Self-Driving, 2 New Electric Cars Coming After Roaster and Cybertruck, Says Elon Musk
The Alpha build of full self-driving tech
After the release of Tesla’s Q2 2020 financial results, Musk said that he personally tested the alpha build of the full self-driving technology and it said that it quite better than what people realize. He further added that he was able to do his commute from his home to his workplace using this and faced no issues. Finally, he emphasized his confidence in the system and that it will be completed by the end of this year. Tesla is reportedly going through “a significant foundational rewrite in the autopilot system” according to the company and the CEO said that Tesla’s intelligent neural net is collecting and analyzing more and more problems in order to improve its performance automatically, this seems to be a very advanced form machine learning.
Mr. Musk, however, clarified that the system will still be requiring regular monitoring by the driver and that it will be some time before the motoring authorities will be convinced of the capabilities and safety of Tesla’s autopilot system, the recent accidents that had occurred really isn’t working in favour of the company.
Tesla’s Performance
Wall Street expected revenue of $5.146 billion from Tesla for the quarter and a loss of $0.14 per share. There were some speculations surrounding whether Tesla would be eligible to be a part of S&P500 if Tesla could produce a profit this quarter and Tesla’s boss Elon Musk had told that Tesla will break even late in this quarter despite the pandemic. Tesla astounded everyone by showing revenue of $6 billion and it reported a profit of $0.50 per share. Tesla made a GAAP net income of $104 million and a non-GAAP net income of $451 million, these figures are much higher than expected. Tesla’s stock (TSLA) was up by 7% in aftermarket trading following the reveal of its impressive results.
New Models
Post the reveal of the Cybertruck, Musk said that this will be Tesla’s last new product for a while, but as per some tweets by the CEO, Tesla seems to have some ideas about adding more vehicles to their line up. Recently a compact car that will be placed below the Model 3 was teased, this car will possibly be designed in China by the company for the international market. From the looks of the render that was shown, the car will probably be a compact hatchback.
Other than this Tesla is also making a 12-passenger electric van for The Boring Company, which is tunnelling start-up launched by Elon Musk that makes subsurface tunnels for electric vehicles in metropolitan cities to reduce congestion. In the conference call following the release of the Q2 financial results, Musk commented that it would be reasonable to assume that Tesla would make a compact vehicle of some kind and probably a higher capacity vehicle too, he made no further comments regarding its details. Elon Musk does seem to be a bit secretive about the future plans of Tesla, including new models; it is possible that he intends to preserve the element of surprise for the launches.
Keep going Elon …
One man can change the world. Apparently sure now.