自称是“特斯拉狂热鼓吹者”的史蒂文·皮特斯此前再一次花费数千美元购买该汽车制造商引以为豪的全自动驾驶(FSD)技术,但这一次,他开始质疑自己的这一决定。
这位比利时人被埃隆·马斯克特立独行的风格所吸引,长期以来也一直对自动驾驶汽车的概念十分着迷。2016年,特斯拉(Tesla)宣布,相关软件开发完成后,旗下的所有新车都将配备所需的硬件实现自动驾驶,皮特斯随即预订了他目前的座驾P100D。从那以后,跟踪P100D智能驾驶辅助系统的改进,并将结果上传到他的YouTube频道,就成为了他的日常爱好。
皮特斯是电动汽车设备供应商Powerdale的质量保证主管,过去几个月一直在等待提取配备FSD的顶级车型Model S Plaid。这将是他接连购买的第三辆特斯拉。
然而,自10月11日以来,首批约1000名安全评分满分的美国特斯拉车主一直在下载该支持在繁忙城市交通中自动驾驶的最新功能,但由于不在特斯拉控制范围内的监管障碍和马斯克自身的战略重点,全球其他国家地区还无法用上FSD。
该技术最终何时、以何种状态进入欧洲及其他地区还有待观察。
客户忠诚动摇
皮特斯表示,如果另一家电动汽车公司能够抢在特斯拉之前将全自动驾驶技术推向欧洲市场,他在下次购买新车时会重新考虑自己的品牌选择。对他而言,仅仅提供自动驾驶功能也无济于事,因为他第一次购买FSD时,特斯拉就承诺FSD将支持全自动驾驶,让他可以在车上睡觉休息。
“我花了9000欧元(约合1.04万美元)购买FSD,但它基本上只值这个价格的一半,因为在拥有我的汽车近五年后,其余承诺要推出的功能尚未交付。”他向《财富》杂志表示。
这也不是一个小问题:FSD是特斯拉所画的一个大饼,被认为是在资本市场支撑起特斯拉8000亿美元以上高企市值的基础。今年1月,马斯克推测,FSD有朝一日可能每年产生约500亿美元的利润。他告诉投资者,仅凭FSD的这一贡献保守估计就能够创造20倍的市盈率,特斯拉由此就可以轻松实现1万亿美元的市值,跻身苹果(Apple)、谷歌(Google)、微软(Microsoft)和亚马逊(Amazon)的精英俱乐部。
由于上周上线的10.2版本只是向特斯拉广大的美国车主开放了之前封闭的“beta”测试,客户仍然必须时刻监督该系统的运行。特斯拉明确警告他们:“它可能会在最不该出错的时候出错”,司机应该“做好立即采取行动的准备”。出于这个原因,对于该测试,它优先考虑依据特斯拉自己的内部风险模型计算出的安全评分最高的客户。
暂且忽略一下FSD的意义,它并不是要不断地监控和辅助像刚拿到驾照的少年那样的人驾驶汽车,而是要帮助你节省出宝贵的时间来做其他的事情。目前FSD beta测试版的配置不会以前者为重点,至少现在还不会。
值得注意的是,如果该试验技术使用期间发生碰撞事故,特斯拉甚至不承担任何法律责任。也就是说,客户要为自己的人身安全和财务问题负全责。
颠覆传统供应商/客户关系
FSD测试版颠覆了传统上供应商与客户之间的关系。从某种意义上说,等同于特斯拉车主掏钱帮助马斯克完成他们所购买的功能的开发,因为他们的数据会被收集并传输到特斯拉的神经网络,用以训练它的自动驾驶软件。迄今还没有哪家车企敢用一款尚未完成开发的产品来圈那么多的钱,也没有哪家车企敢将未完成开发的产品推向市场。
许多特斯拉粉丝乐于承认自己是精神股东——有些人甚至称自己为“小白鼠”。然而,如果奖励回报是成为社区中第一位测试FSD这一新技术的极限的人,他们会很乐意做志愿者。自去年10月被选中抢先体验该自动驾驶技术以来,封闭式beta测试人员还十分积极地免费给FSD做广告,将他们合计数千小时的驾驶数据上传到网上——经由他们与特斯拉的合同商定。
不同于美国,欧洲和世界其他地区还没有等来马斯克的FSD技术,部分原因是美国有着有利于特斯拉的独特监管环境,当局接受了该类技术的风险。只要没有被明令禁止,车企原则上可以展开汽车技术的新创新。当然,鉴于所谓的“自行验证”原则的模糊性,如果企业过于激进,冒了可能太大的风险,这种监管方式可能反而会给它们带来诉讼麻烦。
相比之下,包括欧盟自己的“单一市场”在内的许多其他司法管辖区都需要企业获得技术当局的批准(或“认证”),遵从联合国欧洲经济委员会(UNECE)制定的特定国际标准。
虽然汽车制造商欢迎为他们提供的这项法律确定性,但要获得批准,就得经历在数十个不同国家之间建立广泛共识的艰苦过程,而且其中许多国家并没有汽车行业组织游说政府加快审批。
出于这个原因,马斯克更倾向于专注美国市场。在这一市场,他基本能够掌控FSD的推出速度,他也可以自主决定是否要接受美国国家交通安全委员会(National Traffic Safety Board)的建议。例如,10月7日,他在年会上首次向股东提议道,他正在考虑是否停止向购买FSD、但特斯拉安全评分低于60分(满分100分)的客户提供该项功能。
马斯克不切实际的预测
由于没有什么门路可选,不耐烦的欧洲车主经常在推特(Twitter)上直接询问马斯克,他们什么时候才能够像美国车主一样参与FSD的测试项目。更糟糕的是,特斯拉在欧洲提供的一些软件并没有本土竞争对手的软件那么好用,比如在正确应对高速公路的动态限速等交通标志方面。
“他们现在一直专注于美国市场,而我们什么也没有得到。”皮特斯说。要是有助于推动FFSD的推出,他甚至愿意担任特斯拉的试车员,帮助该公司在欧洲收集数据。
10月初,在特斯拉即将开始运营的德国柏林郊外超级工厂举行的County Fair集会上,马斯克发表讲话没多久,就不得不回应现场人群就这个令人痛心的话题提出的问题。
“FSD很有可能在明年的某个时候推向欧洲,目前事情进展顺利。”10月9日他以其标志性的方式告诉他们。他向外界传达了自己的信心,但并没有冒险给出具体的推出时间表。“我认为,将完成beta测试的FSD很有可能会在明年登陆欧洲。”
问题在于,如今许多特斯拉粉丝都知道不能尽信这些时间表。众所周知,马斯克总是抛出过于乐观的预言,仿佛他有自己的一套时间计算体系一样。虽然特斯拉车主相信马斯克预测的事情最终会发生,但他们也知道,那些计划实现的时间可能会比他预期的要晚得多。例如,就在10月初,这位特斯拉的首席执行官以供应链供货持续短缺为由,不得不将该款电动卡车的投产推迟了整整一年。现在Semi最早要到2023年才会进入市场,而马斯克最初开始接受预订时计划交付的时间是2019年。
奥迪绝不效仿
一直以来,他对FSD进展的预测也好不到哪里去。在2019年4月的“自动驾驶日”(Autonomy Day)活动上,他高调预言,到明年年底,特斯拉将有100万辆自动驾驶出租车上路行驶。2020年7月,他声称,他的团队即将攻克五级自动驾驶技术。五级是自动驾驶技术最先进的阶段,极其复杂,许多专家都认为至少还需要十年才能够实现。今年1月他还是向股东表示,他有信心今年会实现这一技术。但到了夏天,他就打自己脸了,坦言“没有想到会这么难”兑现该承诺,尽管“回想起来,会发现开发难度是显而易见的”。
皮特斯认为,马斯克关于FSD明年将进入欧洲的最新预测,只不过是他设定不切实际目标的又一个例子。“我非常怀疑这是否会发生。”他说。
毕竟,FSD的推出并不完全在他的控制范围之内。在欧洲,决定自动驾驶技术可接受的部署步伐的是联合国欧洲经济委员会,而不是马斯克。该组织的目标是,将所有监管规定归结为精确描述自动驾驶汽车在每一种情况下应该如何运作的数学公式。虽然这种理念越来越受到自动驾驶专家的质疑,但它不太可能在短期内发生巨大变化,更不用说明年了。
“我基本上已经不再对FSD五年内进入欧洲抱有期望。”皮特斯说,“除非你打算在未来很长的一段时间里一直使用特斯拉的汽车,否则我不建议在监管机构实际放行之前再购买这项功能。”
这就是为什么他希望特斯拉在欧洲新推出灵活的FSD订阅服务,这样他就能够在Model S Plaid交付之前切换到该服务。然后,他可以只在有添加重大的新功能时按月支付固定费用来测试该技术,且能够随时取消订阅。
特斯拉并不是唯一一家面临欧洲严格监管的汽车制造商。联合国欧洲经济委员会工作节奏缓慢的另一个受害者是奥迪(Audi)。该大众汽车集团(Volkswagen Group)旗下的品牌最初准备在2017年底推出一款针对高速公路交通拥堵的自动驾驶系统,一切顺利的话,那会成为全球第一个自动驾驶系统。然而,到联合国欧洲经济委员会最终就如何设计这样一个功能以确保足够安全达成一致之时,奥迪依照该日内瓦监管机构的确切规范重新设计其旗舰级豪华轿车A8已经为时已晚。
不过,在9月的一次采访中,奥迪的首席工程师表示,无论车主是否放弃法律追索权,他都不会仅仅为了占得市场先发优势,而效仿特斯拉对自动驾驶技术进行beta测试。像奥迪这样的老牌汽车制造商已经建立起几十年的声誉,而像特斯拉这样仍然需要扩大规模的行业新贵相比之下更愿意冒险行事,以缩小销售规模上的差距。
“对于关系到人身安全的技术,我无法想象要向我们的客户开放测试版本。”奥迪的奥利弗·霍夫曼向《财富》杂志表示,“完全无法想象。即使客户愿意参与,我们也不会那么做。”
目前,特斯拉车主处境有些进退两难。一方面,没有明确的迹象表明,美国以外的监管机构会对自动驾驶技术采取与美国一样的放任政策,允许就未完成开发的产品展开大范围的客户测试。另一方面,马斯克的客户担心,随着时间的推移,他会继续提高FSD的价格,因此像皮特斯这样的人觉得要趁早购买,以免以后要多花钱。
一个简单的解决方案是,只要功能不完整,就允许FSD客户将其购买的服务转移到他们的下一辆特斯拉。目前,FSD与车辆配对绑定,因此如果客户想换一款新车型,就得重新购买可选的额外功能,花费也可能更高。但到目前为止,特斯拉还没有表现出让步的意愿,尽管它生产的每辆车都内置了FSD硬件——只需要通过软件补丁激活该功能。
随着马斯克在欧洲向其他车企开放特斯拉覆盖广泛的超级充电站网络,得益于标准化的充电接口,其他品牌的车主并不需要在新充电电缆上花很多钱,如果有别的队品牌能够更快越过自动驾驶监管障碍,皮特斯会考虑购买它的汽车。
他说:“我并不确定在Plaid之后我的下一辆车是否还会是特斯拉。”(财富中文网)
译者:万志文
自称是“特斯拉狂热鼓吹者”的史蒂文·皮特斯此前再一次花费数千美元购买该汽车制造商引以为豪的全自动驾驶(FSD)技术,但这一次,他开始质疑自己的这一决定。
这位比利时人被埃隆·马斯克特立独行的风格所吸引,长期以来也一直对自动驾驶汽车的概念十分着迷。2016年,特斯拉(Tesla)宣布,相关软件开发完成后,旗下的所有新车都将配备所需的硬件实现自动驾驶,皮特斯随即预订了他目前的座驾P100D。从那以后,跟踪P100D智能驾驶辅助系统的改进,并将结果上传到他的YouTube频道,就成为了他的日常爱好。
皮特斯是电动汽车设备供应商Powerdale的质量保证主管,过去几个月一直在等待提取配备FSD的顶级车型Model S Plaid。这将是他接连购买的第三辆特斯拉。
然而,自10月11日以来,首批约1000名安全评分满分的美国特斯拉车主一直在下载该支持在繁忙城市交通中自动驾驶的最新功能,但由于不在特斯拉控制范围内的监管障碍和马斯克自身的战略重点,全球其他国家地区还无法用上FSD。
该技术最终何时、以何种状态进入欧洲及其他地区还有待观察。
客户忠诚动摇
皮特斯表示,如果另一家电动汽车公司能够抢在特斯拉之前将全自动驾驶技术推向欧洲市场,他在下次购买新车时会重新考虑自己的品牌选择。对他而言,仅仅提供自动驾驶功能也无济于事,因为他第一次购买FSD时,特斯拉就承诺FSD将支持全自动驾驶,让他可以在车上睡觉休息。
“我花了9000欧元(约合1.04万美元)购买FSD,但它基本上只值这个价格的一半,因为在拥有我的汽车近五年后,其余承诺要推出的功能尚未交付。”他向《财富》杂志表示。
这也不是一个小问题:FSD是特斯拉所画的一个大饼,被认为是在资本市场支撑起特斯拉8000亿美元以上高企市值的基础。今年1月,马斯克推测,FSD有朝一日可能每年产生约500亿美元的利润。他告诉投资者,仅凭FSD的这一贡献保守估计就能够创造20倍的市盈率,特斯拉由此就可以轻松实现1万亿美元的市值,跻身苹果(Apple)、谷歌(Google)、微软(Microsoft)和亚马逊(Amazon)的精英俱乐部。
由于上周上线的10.2版本只是向特斯拉广大的美国车主开放了之前封闭的“beta”测试,客户仍然必须时刻监督该系统的运行。特斯拉明确警告他们:“它可能会在最不该出错的时候出错”,司机应该“做好立即采取行动的准备”。出于这个原因,对于该测试,它优先考虑依据特斯拉自己的内部风险模型计算出的安全评分最高的客户。
暂且忽略一下FSD的意义,它并不是要不断地监控和辅助像刚拿到驾照的少年那样的人驾驶汽车,而是要帮助你节省出宝贵的时间来做其他的事情。目前FSD beta测试版的配置不会以前者为重点,至少现在还不会。
值得注意的是,如果该试验技术使用期间发生碰撞事故,特斯拉甚至不承担任何法律责任。也就是说,客户要为自己的人身安全和财务问题负全责。
颠覆传统供应商/客户关系
FSD测试版颠覆了传统上供应商与客户之间的关系。从某种意义上说,等同于特斯拉车主掏钱帮助马斯克完成他们所购买的功能的开发,因为他们的数据会被收集并传输到特斯拉的神经网络,用以训练它的自动驾驶软件。迄今还没有哪家车企敢用一款尚未完成开发的产品来圈那么多的钱,也没有哪家车企敢将未完成开发的产品推向市场。
许多特斯拉粉丝乐于承认自己是精神股东——有些人甚至称自己为“小白鼠”。然而,如果奖励回报是成为社区中第一位测试FSD这一新技术的极限的人,他们会很乐意做志愿者。自去年10月被选中抢先体验该自动驾驶技术以来,封闭式beta测试人员还十分积极地免费给FSD做广告,将他们合计数千小时的驾驶数据上传到网上——经由他们与特斯拉的合同商定。
不同于美国,欧洲和世界其他地区还没有等来马斯克的FSD技术,部分原因是美国有着有利于特斯拉的独特监管环境,当局接受了该类技术的风险。只要没有被明令禁止,车企原则上可以展开汽车技术的新创新。当然,鉴于所谓的“自行验证”原则的模糊性,如果企业过于激进,冒了可能太大的风险,这种监管方式可能反而会给它们带来诉讼麻烦。
相比之下,包括欧盟自己的“单一市场”在内的许多其他司法管辖区都需要企业获得技术当局的批准(或“认证”),遵从联合国欧洲经济委员会(UNECE)制定的特定国际标准。
虽然汽车制造商欢迎为他们提供的这项法律确定性,但要获得批准,就得经历在数十个不同国家之间建立广泛共识的艰苦过程,而且其中许多国家并没有汽车行业组织游说政府加快审批。
出于这个原因,马斯克更倾向于专注美国市场。在这一市场,他基本能够掌控FSD的推出速度,他也可以自主决定是否要接受美国国家交通安全委员会(National Traffic Safety Board)的建议。例如,10月7日,他在年会上首次向股东提议道,他正在考虑是否停止向购买FSD、但特斯拉安全评分低于60分(满分100分)的客户提供该项功能。
马斯克不切实际的预测
由于没有什么门路可选,不耐烦的欧洲车主经常在推特(Twitter)上直接询问马斯克,他们什么时候才能够像美国车主一样参与FSD的测试项目。更糟糕的是,特斯拉在欧洲提供的一些软件并没有本土竞争对手的软件那么好用,比如在正确应对高速公路的动态限速等交通标志方面。
“他们现在一直专注于美国市场,而我们什么也没有得到。”皮特斯说。要是有助于推动FFSD的推出,他甚至愿意担任特斯拉的试车员,帮助该公司在欧洲收集数据。
10月初,在特斯拉即将开始运营的德国柏林郊外超级工厂举行的County Fair集会上,马斯克发表讲话没多久,就不得不回应现场人群就这个令人痛心的话题提出的问题。
“FSD很有可能在明年的某个时候推向欧洲,目前事情进展顺利。”10月9日他以其标志性的方式告诉他们。他向外界传达了自己的信心,但并没有冒险给出具体的推出时间表。“我认为,将完成beta测试的FSD很有可能会在明年登陆欧洲。”
问题在于,如今许多特斯拉粉丝都知道不能尽信这些时间表。众所周知,马斯克总是抛出过于乐观的预言,仿佛他有自己的一套时间计算体系一样。虽然特斯拉车主相信马斯克预测的事情最终会发生,但他们也知道,那些计划实现的时间可能会比他预期的要晚得多。例如,就在10月初,这位特斯拉的首席执行官以供应链供货持续短缺为由,不得不将该款电动卡车的投产推迟了整整一年。现在Semi最早要到2023年才会进入市场,而马斯克最初开始接受预订时计划交付的时间是2019年。
奥迪绝不效仿
一直以来,他对FSD进展的预测也好不到哪里去。在2019年4月的“自动驾驶日”(Autonomy Day)活动上,他高调预言,到明年年底,特斯拉将有100万辆自动驾驶出租车上路行驶。2020年7月,他声称,他的团队即将攻克五级自动驾驶技术。五级是自动驾驶技术最先进的阶段,极其复杂,许多专家都认为至少还需要十年才能够实现。今年1月他还是向股东表示,他有信心今年会实现这一技术。但到了夏天,他就打自己脸了,坦言“没有想到会这么难”兑现该承诺,尽管“回想起来,会发现开发难度是显而易见的”。
皮特斯认为,马斯克关于FSD明年将进入欧洲的最新预测,只不过是他设定不切实际目标的又一个例子。“我非常怀疑这是否会发生。”他说。
毕竟,FSD的推出并不完全在他的控制范围之内。在欧洲,决定自动驾驶技术可接受的部署步伐的是联合国欧洲经济委员会,而不是马斯克。该组织的目标是,将所有监管规定归结为精确描述自动驾驶汽车在每一种情况下应该如何运作的数学公式。虽然这种理念越来越受到自动驾驶专家的质疑,但它不太可能在短期内发生巨大变化,更不用说明年了。
“我基本上已经不再对FSD五年内进入欧洲抱有期望。”皮特斯说,“除非你打算在未来很长的一段时间里一直使用特斯拉的汽车,否则我不建议在监管机构实际放行之前再购买这项功能。”
这就是为什么他希望特斯拉在欧洲新推出灵活的FSD订阅服务,这样他就能够在Model S Plaid交付之前切换到该服务。然后,他可以只在有添加重大的新功能时按月支付固定费用来测试该技术,且能够随时取消订阅。
特斯拉并不是唯一一家面临欧洲严格监管的汽车制造商。联合国欧洲经济委员会工作节奏缓慢的另一个受害者是奥迪(Audi)。该大众汽车集团(Volkswagen Group)旗下的品牌最初准备在2017年底推出一款针对高速公路交通拥堵的自动驾驶系统,一切顺利的话,那会成为全球第一个自动驾驶系统。然而,到联合国欧洲经济委员会最终就如何设计这样一个功能以确保足够安全达成一致之时,奥迪依照该日内瓦监管机构的确切规范重新设计其旗舰级豪华轿车A8已经为时已晚。
不过,在9月的一次采访中,奥迪的首席工程师表示,无论车主是否放弃法律追索权,他都不会仅仅为了占得市场先发优势,而效仿特斯拉对自动驾驶技术进行beta测试。像奥迪这样的老牌汽车制造商已经建立起几十年的声誉,而像特斯拉这样仍然需要扩大规模的行业新贵相比之下更愿意冒险行事,以缩小销售规模上的差距。
“对于关系到人身安全的技术,我无法想象要向我们的客户开放测试版本。”奥迪的奥利弗·霍夫曼向《财富》杂志表示,“完全无法想象。即使客户愿意参与,我们也不会那么做。”
目前,特斯拉车主处境有些进退两难。一方面,没有明确的迹象表明,美国以外的监管机构会对自动驾驶技术采取与美国一样的放任政策,允许就未完成开发的产品展开大范围的客户测试。另一方面,马斯克的客户担心,随着时间的推移,他会继续提高FSD的价格,因此像皮特斯这样的人觉得要趁早购买,以免以后要多花钱。
一个简单的解决方案是,只要功能不完整,就允许FSD客户将其购买的服务转移到他们的下一辆特斯拉。目前,FSD与车辆配对绑定,因此如果客户想换一款新车型,就得重新购买可选的额外功能,花费也可能更高。但到目前为止,特斯拉还没有表现出让步的意愿,尽管它生产的每辆车都内置了FSD硬件——只需要通过软件补丁激活该功能。
随着马斯克在欧洲向其他车企开放特斯拉覆盖广泛的超级充电站网络,得益于标准化的充电接口,其他品牌的车主并不需要在新充电电缆上花很多钱,如果有别的队品牌能够更快越过自动驾驶监管障碍,皮特斯会考虑购买它的汽车。
他说:“我并不确定在Plaid之后我的下一辆车是否还会是特斯拉。”(财富中文网)
译者:万志文
This time around, self-described “Tesla EVangelist” Steven Peeters is starting to question his decision to once again spend thousands on the carmaker's vaunted full self-driving (FSD) technology.
Drawn to the brand by Elon Musk's maverick style, the Belgian has long been fascinated by the idea of autonomous vehicles. Peeters ordered his current P100D right after Tesla announced in 2016 that all new cars would ship with the necessary hardware to enable self-driving once the software was developed. It has since become something of a hobby for him to track improvements in his car's intelligent driver assistance system and upload the results to his YouTube channel.
Peeters, the quality assurance chief at electric vehicle equipment provider Powerdale, has now been waiting for months to take delivery of a top-of-the-line Model S Plaid complete with FSD. For him, it will be the third Tesla in a row.
Yet while the first 1,000 or so American Tesla owners with perfect 100/100 safety scores have since October 11 been downloading the latest feature that steers the vehicle automatically in dense urban traffic, the rest of the world is at the back of the queue because of a mixture of regulatory hurdles outside Tesla's control and Musk's own strategic priorities.
When, and in what state, this technology eventually comes to Europe and beyond remains to be seen.
Shaking loyalty
If another EV competitor is able to beat Tesla to the European market with this technology, Peeters says he would reconsider his loyalty to the brand the next time he shops for a new ride. Simply offering auto-steering doesn't cut it either, as he bought FSD the first time around on the promise of being able to sleep in his car while it handles the driving for him.
“I paid €9,000 [about $10,400] for something that is basically worth half that because the rest of the promised features have not been delivered after almost five years of owning my car,” he told Fortune.
This is no small issue, either: FSD is considered fundamental to the equity story underpinning Tesla's lofty $800-billion-plus market capitalization. In January, Musk speculated FSD could one day generate profits of roughly $50 billion annually. Conservatively assign a multiple of 20 times earnings on that contribution alone and Tesla should easily break into the elite $1 trillion club alongside Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, he told investors.
Since the version 10.2 that went live last week only opened up Tesla's wider U.S. community to the previously closed "beta" test, customers must still supervise the system at all times. The carmaker explicitly warns them "it may do the wrong thing at the worst time" and drivers should "be prepared to act immediately." For that reason, it is prioritizing customers with the highest safety scores calculated on the basis of Tesla's own in-house risk models.
Ignore for one moment the point of the technology isn't to constantly watch a car steer itself like it was a teenager who just earned a driver’s permit, but to free up your valuable time to do other activities instead. That is not to be, at least not yet, with the current FSD beta setup.
What is noteworthy here is that Tesla does not even bear any legal liability should a crash occur while the experimental technology is engaged, hardly a sign of confidence by its lawyers. Instead, the customer must foot the bill both physically and financially.
Flipped relationship
The FSD beta flips the traditional vendor-customer relationship on its head. In a sense, Tesla owners have paid Musk for the privilege of helping him finish development of a feature they purchased, as their data is harvested and fed into Tesla's neural network to train the self-driving software. No other automaker has dared pocket so much money in exchange for a product it has yet to develop, nor rolled it out in an unfinished state.
Many Tesla fans readily acknowledge being citizen employees—some might even call themselves guinea pigs. Yet they are happy to volunteer if the reward is being the first on their block to test the limits of the new technology. Closed beta testers have also diligently advertised FSD for free, uploading online what are likely thousands upon thousands of hours they've collectively driven—subject to their contractual agreement with Tesla—ever since they were selected for early access last October.
Part of the reason why Europe has to wait along with the rest of the world for Musk's FSD is the uniquely favorable environment in the U.S., where risks of this kind are accepted by authorities. New innovations in automotive technology are in principle allowed so long as they are not expressly forbidden. Of course, this regulatory approach can backfire on companies in the form of lawsuits if they take potentially too great of a risk, given the fuzzy nature of what is known as "self-certification."
By comparison, many other jurisdictions, including the EU’s own Single Market, require approval by technical authorities (or "homologation") based on specific international standards set by a United Nations body in Geneva called the UNECE.
While carmakers welcome the legal certainty this provides them, progress depends on a painstaking process of building broad consensus among dozens of different countries, many of whom have no auto industry lobbying them to speed things up.
For this reason Musk prefers to focus on the U.S., where the pace of FSD rollout is largely in his hands and he can opt to accept or ignore recommendations from the National Traffic Safety Board at his leisure. On October 7, for example, he suggested for the first time to shareholders at an annual meeting that he is considering whether to implement a cutoff for customers that bought FSD but whose Tesla scores fell below 60 out of 100.
“Elon time”
With few options at their disposal, impatient European owners have often taken to Twitter to ask Musk directly when they will finally be able to access the FSD beta program like their American counterparts. Worse, some of Tesla's software that is available in Europe is less effective than those of homegrown rivals, such as in its ability to correctly respond to certain traffic signs like dynamic speed limits on motorways.
“They’ve always been focusing on the U.S. right now, while we’re not getting anything,” said Peeters, who even offered to serve as a Tesla test driver to help gather data for Europe if it would help move things along.
During early October’s County Fair at Tesla’s upcoming German assembly plant outside of Berlin, it didn't take long before Musk had to field questions from the crowd on the sore subject.
“Next year sometime is quite likely, so it’s looking good,” he told them on Saturday in his signature manner, which conveys general confidence without venturing too far into the realm of actual certainty. “FSD, which will be beyond beta I think, is looking highly likely to be in Europe next year.”
The problem is many Tesla fans now know to take these timetables with a grain of salt. Musk's prophecies are notoriously optimistic, calculated as they were on “Elon time.” While Tesla drivers trust that events will transpire just as he foresees them, they realize the plans could be fulfilled much, much later than expected. Only early October, for example, the Tesla CEO was forced to delay Cybertruck’s start of production by a full year, citing ongoing shortages in the supply chain. The Semi now won't come until 2023 at the earliest; Musk originally began taking orders for a scheduled 2019 delivery date.
No beta for Audi
His track record on FSD hasn't been any better. On Autonomy Day in April 2019, he famously predicted 1 million Teslas would be on the road driving without any human supervision by the end of the following year. In July 2020 he then claimed his team was on the cusp of solving Level 5 autonomy, the most advanced stage of progress that is so complicated many experts believe it could still be a decade away at the minimum. That didn't stop him from telling shareholders in January he was confident it would then come this year, only to ultimately concede this summer he "didn’t expect it to be so hard" to deliver on his promise, even though "the difficulty is obvious in retrospect."
Peeters thinks Musk's latest prediction of FSD coming to Europe next year is just another example of Elon time. “I very much doubt that will happen,” he said.
After all, the rollout is not entirely in his control. In Europe, it is the UNECE that determines the acceptable pace of deployment, not Musk, and it aims to boil all regulations down to mathematical formulas that precisely describe how a self-driving car should act in each and every situation. While this philosophy is increasingly being questioned by autonomous driving experts, it's unlikely to change dramatically any time soon, let alone next year.
“I have basically given up all hope of FSD coming to Europe in the next five years," Peeters said. "Unless you're planning to hold on to the car for a very long time, I don’t recommend anymore buying this feature until the regulators actually allow it."
That's why he wishes Tesla’s flexible new FSD subscription service would be introduced in Europe so he could switch to that before the Model S Plaid is delivered. Then he could pay a flat rate to test out the technology on a month-by-month basis only when major new features are added, and cancel at any time.
Tesla isn't the only carmaker facing Europe's regulatory rigidity. Another casualty of the UNECE’s glacial pace of work is Audi. The Volkswagen Group brand was initially prepared, in late 2017, to launch an automated pilot for highway traffic jams that would have been the world’s first unsupervised system. By the time regulators in Geneva finally agreed on how such a feature could be engineered to be sufficiently safe, it was already too late to redesign its flagship A8 luxury limousine to meet exact UNECE specifications.
In an interview in September, the brand's chief engineer said, however, he would not follow Tesla’s approach of beta testing self-driving technology just to bring it quicker to market, irrespective of whether owners signed off their rights to legal recourse. Established carmakers like his have reputations built over decades, while an upstart like Tesla that still needs to reach scale is more willing to take risks to narrow the sales gap.
“When it comes to issues of life and limb, I cannot imagine opening up a beta to our customers," Audi's Oliver Hoffmann told Fortune. "Not at all. Not even if they were willing."
Right now, Tesla buyers are in a tricky bind. On the one hand, there is no definitive sign that regulators outside the United States will adopt the same laissez-faire approach to self-driving technology and allow wide-scale customer tests of an unfinished product. On the other, Musk's customers fear he will continue to ratchet the cost of FSD ever higher over time, so people like Peeters sense the urge to lock a price in now lest they end up paying more later.
An easy solution would be allowing FSD customers to migrate their purchase to their next Tesla so long as it is not feature-complete. Currently it is paired to the vehicle, so if a customer wants to trade in for a new model, they will have to buy the optional extra all over again, likely at a higher cost. But Tesla has thus far shown no willingness to concede here, even though every car it builds comes with FSD hardware embedded—all that would be required is activating the feature via a software patch.
Now that Musk is opening up his extensive EV supercharger network to the competition in Europe, where rival owners won't need to invest in so much as a new cable thanks to standardized plugs, Peeters is considering shopping around should another brand navigate the regulatory self-driving hurdles in Europe more quickly.
"I’m not sure my next car after the Plaid will still be a Tesla," he said.