Although there has been a lot of noise about Tesla’s fake promotional videos recently, it has not affected the promotion of FSD Beta.
According to the latest news, Tesla is recruiting for a new position- automatic driving safety officer , the kind that Robotaxi cannot do without, and the kind who sits in the driver’s seat and is ready to take over at any time.
Judging from the job requirements, this recruitment is mainly to prepare for the launch of FSD Beta in Europe. However, European policies are more cautious, and Tesla is not allowed to push it directly to car owners like in the United States and Canada, making car owners obliged to act as “safety officers” for the test version.
This change also means that Tesla went around in a circle, and finally had to use the Waymo route to land FSD.
For the sake of safety and reliability , and more importantly , compliance , Tesla has no other choice, and it is likely to be the same in China.
The only difference is that the Tesla FSD Beta version already has more than 100,000 users in North America. If these car owners who participated in the public beta are included, Tesla will become the company with the most autopilot safety officers in the world, and it is also an autopilot model. The company with the largest road test scale.
However, new problems also arise. Now that Europe has started to recruit special self-driving safety officers, will North American car owners be willing to continue to “dedicate themselves”?
Tesla’s new job: self-driving safety officer
According to the official website, Tesla is recruiting ADAS test operators (A DAS Test Operator) in Switzerland, Finland and Denmark, regardless of gender.
ADAS test operators are required to identify areas for improvement in software iterations , as well as responsible for regression testing and testing vehicles on public roads, test tracks and proving grounds.
The work content is as follows:
- Use perspective scenarios for Autopilot testing to survey local areas and design test routes.
- Design test specifications and create judgment criteria using tools such as XRAY.
- Research and familiarize yourself with the latest Autopilot version and other related vehicle features.
- Perform practical testing according to specifications and provide ad-hoc support for specially requested scenarios.
- Test data is analyzed using proprietary software designed in-house by Tesla, triaging software issues and abnormal vehicle behavior.
- Communicate with developers and test engineers and be on call with questions or comments if necessary.
- Maintains and records test vehicle condition and coordinates repairs or modifications as necessary.
- Provide support for any other vehicle engineering tests as required.
- Simply put, this recruitment is to conduct safety tests on Tesla’s assisted driving system.
As for the goal, Tesla writes that it “achieves full self-driving.”
On the one hand, this means that Tesla is laying the groundwork for FSD Beta to land in Europe .
On the other hand, isn’t the recruitment of safety officers just a new position that Google Waymo opened up when it developed autonomous driving? The safety officer is also one of the most important signs in Waymo’s route.
Tesla landed on FSD and embarked on the Waymo model
Regarding the large-scale implementation of autonomous driving, the two well-known routes in the field are the Waymo route and the Tesla route .
The Tesla route, that is, the mass-produced autopilot route, is to first apply autopilot to mass-produced vehicles, and use the owner’s use and human-machine co-driving mode to achieve L4-level functions through a large number of software updates and iterations.
The core of which is the shadow mode (shadow mode).
When the user is driving a Tesla car, the system does not participate in vehicle control , but the algorithm will always make simulated decisions in the background and compare it with the user’s behavior.
If the simulated decision of the algorithm is inconsistent with user behavior, the system will upload data to help engineers improve the algorithm.
For example, when the car owner steps on the brake while driving, but the system thinks that there is no need to step on the brake, this scene will be recorded in data, uploaded to the background, and re-learned and iterated.
In other words, every Tesla owner who uses the assisted driving system is not only paying the company, but also serving as a free safety officer for the company.
The Waymo route is to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to prepare the fleet and test safety officers before large-scale landing, and conduct a large number of actual road tests.
To be more straightforward, the Tesla route can upgrade the algorithm while selling cars to ensure revenue, while the Waymo route needs to burn money until it can be commercialized.
In the Waymo route, although safety is the first priority, every expansion of scale and area is behind the exponential growth of various costs including safety personnel. Therefore, as the scale of implementation advances, the Waymo route will encounter challenges. It is getting more and more serious, and because the security personnel cannot be removed for commercial use for a while, the business model cannot achieve a closed loop…
This is why Waymo’s valuation continues to shrink, commercialization is slow, and layoffs, while Tesla can make great strides.
But now, a new challenge has come.
In European and Chinese laws and regulations, as assisted driving, human-machine co-driving is allowed; as “full automatic driving”, the responsibility for potential accidents must be taken from the car owner, which means that once the car manufacturer declares automatic driving, it will It is necessary to provide safe and reliable automatic driving capabilities , and it is not possible to automatically drive in advance and assist in driving after the event.
Although the shadow mode can help Tesla reduce costs and achieve mass production ahead of schedule, there is really no way to guarantee that the shadow mode will truly realize the transition to fully autonomous driving.
Moreover, in the current situation, Musk is facing a dilemma:
If FSD cannot be introduced to the two major markets of Europe and China, product competitiveness will be weakened;
However, when FSD is launched in Europe and China, according to local regulations, it cannot be a “test” version of the product like North America.
So under this dilemma, the choice of safety officers on the Waymo route is a practical solution.
Through the automatic driving safety officer, Tesla FSD can start the road test in the above-mentioned areas, and can realize the learning, training and iteration of the road condition data of these scenarios.
In addition, with the improvement of FSD capabilities, when FSD is officially launched in Europe and China, it can also explain the reliability and safety to relevant departments and regulations.
After all, in China, Robotaxi already has a complete set of tests and regulatory guarantees. Previously, Xiaopeng G9 passed the Robotaxi test as a mass-produced car, which almost means the entry of higher-level intelligent driving.
Therefore, hiring a self-driving safety officer is basically not an option for Musk.
When will European car owners be able to use it?
Tesla’s launch of FSD Beta in Europe is actually one of Musk’s many pies.
On AI Day last year, Musk promised to launch FSD Beta in various regions of the world, but so far it is only available in North America .
In addition to this public recruitment of security officers, Tesla has been secretly testing FSD Beta in Europe for more than a year.
And a source revealed that there were no accidents during the test.
Most importantly, to launch the FSD Beta system in Europe, Tesla must obtain regulatory approval .
For example, the European Union’s “General Safety Regulations” , which limit the scenarios in which the automatic driving system is activated, as well as the maximum speed of the vehicle.
Europe also applies the regulations and guidelines developed by the United World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29).
In other words, even if Tesla can try its best to solve the long-tail problem under various open road conditions in European road tests, it is still unknown when European users will be able to use FSD Beta.
But the good news is that Mercedes-Benz’s L3 system has been approved in Europe, and the United States has also given road permission.
If reciprocity is reciprocal, the landing of Tesla FSD in Europe should not be too far away.
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This article comes from the WeChat public account “Smart Car Reference” (ID: AI4Auto) , author: Cao Yuan, 36 Krypton is authorized to publish.
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Event Tracking
- 2023-01-29 Tesla FSD is forced to take the Waymo route, recruits autopilot safety officers, and lands in Europe and China in compliance
- 2023-01-18Tesla senior engineer confirms: 2016 self-driving technology demonstration video is fake
- 2022-11-25Tesla’s fully autonomous driving beta is now open to all car owners in North America
- 2022-10-20 Musk: Tesla’s fully autonomous driving will not be approved this year
- 2021-11-14 US NHTSA investigates accidents caused by Tesla FSD software for the first time
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