During last week's Tesla earnings conference call, Musk once again mentioned the assisted driving system called "Fully Autonomous Driving" (FSD), saying, "I've found that most people don't actually understand how good this system is. I would encourage anyone to better understand this system, just give it a try and let the car take you around
Truist Securities analyst William Stein, who covered Tesla, used this as an excuse to let Model Y take him and his son "around". After returning, he wrote a report to the client dejectedly, saying that fortunately he intervened proactively, otherwise a collision would have occurred.
Stein further questioned Tesla's postponed autonomous taxi launch event in October, stating that he was "confused about what the company may showcase".
Two test drives
As a background, Stein initially tried FSD after Tesla released its financial report in April, and this month is his second time using it. Both times were on sunny and dry days in the suburbs of New York. After the first use, Stein gave a decent rating of "astonishingly good, but currently of no practical use". However, after almost getting into trouble this month, Stein's latest rating became "not better, can be said to be worse".
Stein explained that in this month's test, when the car in front was only halfway to a right turn, Model Y attempted to accelerate through the intersection. If it weren't for his proactive intervention, a collision would have occurred.
The reason for Stein's negative comment is also the tolerance of the FSD system - he no longer needs to hold the steering wheel to make the auto drive system continue to operate, and the system can continue to operate for a period of time even if the driver moves his eyes away from the road.
Stein wrote in his report, "I turned my head away completely without looking at the road, asking my son to be aware of the dangers on the road, and then the car continued to drive autonomously for 20-40 seconds before issuing a warning
In addition to narrowly avoiding a collision, Stein also needed to take control from the FSD system when the police gestured for Tesla cars to stop on the roadside and wait for funeral vehicles to pass by. In addition, in this test, the FSD system also changed lanes twice on solid white lines on highways that explicitly prohibit lane changing.
Stein concluded that Tesla's FSD system is indeed amazing, but it is not close to solving the problem of "automation" (driving).
Remove the enthusiasm for hype
On the just passed Monday, Tesla surged 5.6% due to being listed as a "preferred stock" by Morgan Stanley's automotive team. However, in this report, Adam Jonas, the chief analyst of the automotive industry at Great Wall Motors, bluntly stated that compared to autonomous driving, Tesla's other businesses are more promising.
Jonas stated in the report that although Tesla is still manufacturing cars, we have noticed that the company is actively reallocating incremental resources, technology, personnel, and capital from the automotive sector. Now it is also increasingly clear that compared with autonomous vehicle, the business opportunities of embodied intelligence in non automotive fields may be much larger and the deployment speed will be much faster.