Elon Musk Hints At New Tesla Autopilot Hardware Update Amidst Share Price Crash, Huge Revenue Losses
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, has hinted that there will be an update to the Tesla Autopilot hardware while on a recent conference call with analysts. During the call, Musk said that there will be more to say on the autopilot hardware soon, which is new for him since most of his Autopilot news often revolves around the software.
On the software front, he told analysts that the company had developed technology that could deliver human level autonomy to their vehicles, Electrek reports. But he added that the regulators might push them to an even higher standard to prove the safety of the autopilot feature.
“I think that we will be able to achieve full autonomy with the current hardware. The question is – it’s not just full autonomy, but full autonomy with what level of reliability and what will be acceptable to regulators,” he said. “Now, regulators may require some significant margin above human capability in order for a full autonomy to be engaged… but I think I’m confident that we can get to an approximately human level with our current hardware.”
Then he dropped the bombshell about the autopilot hardware update.
“But yeah, we’ll have more to say on the hardware front soon, we’re just not ready to say anything now. But I feel very optimistic on that front.”
Tesla cars will soon be one step closer to level 5 autonomy. https://t.co/7cpdmM4LdN
— Futurism (@futurism) November 2, 2017
The New Tesla Autopilot Hardware
According to Electrek, the update on the “hardware front” could be related to the new “Autopilot 2.5” hardware suite. This is a much more powerful version of Tesla’s current onboard supercomputer. As Electrek noted, the existence of new autopilot hardware became apparent when the Model 3’s driver-facing camera was announced. The Tesla Model S and X do not have this feature. Their sources later confirmed that there had been an update to the hardware and the driver-facing camera wasn’t the only upgrade. The new hardware suite also includes a second GPU to enable even more computing power.
At the time that this was reported, Tesla acknowledged the existence of this update, but hasn’t supplied any details about it and seems to be downplaying how big of an update it is. So could this be the announcement that Elon Musk hinted at during the conference call?
There have also been rumors that Tesla is developing its own chips for self-driving that would add even more autonomy to the vehicles. Perhaps Musk will confirm (or deny) that in his next update about the Autopilot hardware features.
Elon Musk's net worth crashes down $800 million in a day amid Tesla meltdown https://t.co/MVGkve4h5o pic.twitter.com/dTSbs8XWiu
— Forbes (@Forbes) November 2, 2017
The Tesla Revenue Slump
These hints about potential Tesla hardware updates comes amidst news that the company lost a lot of money during the third quarter of 2017. As Forbes reported, Tesla lost $671 million during Q3. They made a “small” profit of $22 million last year during the same period, last year.
But according to Forbes, the investors are more focused on potential long-term gains than short-term losses. They are concerned about the production issues that the Model 3 is going through. The company’s original manufacturing target was to make 5,000 model 3s per week, but that has since been reportedly pushed back due to issues at the Nevada Gigafactory. Tesla has also slashed its Model 3 parts orders by 40 percent with one supplier, which is not inspiring confidence in their ability to deliver a mass-market electric vehicle.
The stock price seems to reflect this shaky investor confidence as the company’s shares plummetted to $299.60 at the close of trading on Thursday, from September’s high of $389.61.
Perhaps investors will be comforted by news that Tesla is continuing to innovate its Autopilot hardware. Only time will tell.
[Featured Image by Tesla Motors]
