Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD Beta) program gives owners a chance to test the company’s latest advancements in driver-assistance technology. There are already 100,000 drivers participating in the test, but Tesla is considering expanding the number of tests to 1 million, and this goal is expected to be achieved by the end of 2022.
On Tuesday, local time in the United States, Musk attended the All in Sumit technology conference in Miami. He was involved in discussions on a variety of topics, including plans to scale up FSD testing. Musk said: “There are about 100,000 car owners participating in the FSD Beta test, so the scale is not small. But by the end of this year, we will expand the number of testers to about 1 million people.”
The FSD Beta program benefits many car owners because they can experience the latest version of FSD first. At the same time, the program has also greatly benefited Tesla by accumulating driving data. Tesla vehicles are equipped with exterior cameras that capture images needed for “Sentry Mode” or to activate safety features like Autopilot.
Since Tesla scrapped radar last year, the company has started using only cameras to get data on the vehicle and its surroundings. The cameras transmit images to Tesla’s Autopilot team, which are then compiled by computers to improve FSD performance by learning the behavior of other drivers. This is called a neural network, and while it’s not unique to Tesla, it’s an important factor in the continuous improvement of the FSD suite.
The expansion of the FSD Beta testing program will not only benefit more drivers, but more people will have early access to over-the-air software updates. Meanwhile, Tesla’s FSD suite will also become more accurate and sophisticated in the process. More vehicles mean more data and scaling up the test scale will increase data accumulation tenfold while deepening the understanding of the data.
Musk remains confident that the FSD kit will be perfected by the end of the year. He said on a fourth-quarter 2021 earnings call in January that he would be “very surprised” if Tesla doesn’t fix the FSD issue by the end of 2022.