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Tesla has always been a hectic place to work, and this is especially true for Tesla's autopilot team. Between 2016 and 2018, Tesla lost three chiefs of autopilot in the space of 18 months. A number of lower level autopilot managers and engineers have also left.
Amir Efrati of Information reports that Tesla has experienced a new wave of autopilot departures.
"At least 11 members of the software team, or nearly 10% of the entire group, including long-time members, have gone in the past few months," writes Efrati. "These departures follow Mr. Musk's dismissal of the head of the autopilot group Stuart Bowers in early May."
Efrati wrote last November that Bowers was responsible for the autopilot effort alongside Artificial Intelligence expert Andrej Karpathy. Bowers focused on operational issues, while Karpathy was the technical lead.
At an event held in April, Musk boasted Tesla's rapid advances in self-driving technology and predicted that Tesla would reach full autonomy in 2020. But Efrati reports that Musk gave a different tone behind closed doors. Musk told his subordinates that he "was unhappy with the progress made in developing fully automated driving capabilities." He is also unhappy that some members of the team told him that they could not not respect the deadlines he had set for developing the technology, "sources told Efrati.
Until this year, Tesla autopilot technology was limited to highway driving. The autopilot would keep the car in its hallway and maintain a safe distance from nearby cars, but that was just about it. In recent months, Tesla has begun to offer more advanced features, such as the ability to change lanes and interchange highways.
Musk expects Tesla to attack driving in the city, including street lights, roundabouts and other complex intersections, in the coming months. Musk says that Autopilot will be able to handle all types of roads and intersections – albeit under the driver's supervision – by the end of the year, a condition that will be met. it describes as a "complete feature". He then thinks that the technology will not be safe enough for human supervision to be unnecessary.
Does Musk underestimate the difficulty of autonomous driving?
Musk has long been optimistic about the progress of the Tesla autopilot. In 2015, Musk said that building a fully autonomous vehicle was "a much easier problem than we think". He predicted that Tesla would solve this problem in about two years.
But other companies have found it difficult to move from "full functionality" to full autonomy. Waymo, for example, has been offering cars that can run on a wide range of road types since 2015. However, four years later, the company still has drivers of safe driving for most journeys.
One thing that makes urban driving difficult is that every city is different. Cities present not only subtle differences in driving laws, signage and road design, but also in driving styles. Companies like Waymo are considering solving this problem by setting up a taxi service, one city at a time. Tesla, on the other hand, must master the problem for its global customer base.
Other companies have also initially focused on cities such as Phoenix, Miami and Houston, with their wide streets and warm weather. Tesla needs its technology to operate in a full range of weather and traffic conditions, including in dense, snow-covered areas such as New York and Boston.
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