Tesla Talk 2

Yes there are some vids out of the new Xpeng system being driven in a busy hectic city in China in bad weather. Far more difficult circumstances than in a typical US city. Crazy drivers, most people don't even indicate. Have a look for yourself. It seems capable

And I guess you haven't seen any of the Tesla FSD beta public demos from maybe 50-60 EU cities from the last 3 months either? About a million vids of those about. And then there is the totally illegal vids like the cybertruck that was dumped into Prague city centre. FSD worked fine and no, it did NOT have maps!

Having stood idely by for a while now observing this conversation I'll finally bite and be the credible activist you seem to frame yourself as but also demand others need to have an opinion on this topic.

You say you work with perception stacks, so you’ll know the key question isn’t how many sensors you bolt on, it’s whether the system can interpret the environment reliably at scale.

Tesla’s approach is vision-first with neural nets trained on billions of miles of fleet data. That’s fundamentally different from the traditional sensor-fusion stack most AV programmes use.

Right now in the US we’re seeing FSD run full end-to-end city driving with no route pre-mapping, handling roundabouts, unprotected turns, construction zones etc. The system is learning behaviourally rather than relying on high-definition maps and LiDAR point clouds.

Whether someone likes the approach or not, the evidence is that it works in the real world:

• Hundreds of thousands of vehicles running the stack daily
• Billions of real-world miles of training data from the fleet
• Continuous OTA improvement cycles measured in weeks, not model years

Most other AV programmes are still limited to geofenced areas or require expensive sensor stacks that won’t scale to consumer vehicles.

On the regulatory side, Europe isn’t rejecting the tech either. UNECE regulations for assisted driving are evolving and several updates already allow higher-level automated lane-keeping and driver assistance features. Tesla’s stack already exceeds what those frameworks were originally written for.

So the real debate isn’t “Tesla lacks hardware”. It’s whether vision + AI at fleet scale can outperform traditional sensor fusion.

Given what we’re seeing in the US right now, dismissing the approach outright feels more ideological than technical.

Theory vs. practice comes to my mind here. According to LM the FSD can't work without the sensors but does so in the real life, and better than the other implementations with the extra sensors.

Edit: And just to be clear, I don't talk about the Cybercab, but the L2-L4 consumer FSD for my personal car.

Talking about FSD.

Tesla February sales in Turkey were only 720. This was a star market for Tesla last year. It is supplied from Germany. I fear the Norwegian market is the next to come under pressure mostly from Mercedes, BMW and later Id.tiguan and new peaq/enyaq. If the Germans provide 4WD models then Tesla will suffer as Norwegian market is affluent and 4wd is a selling point. The presales on Merc and BMW are over a year and one must assume a sizable minority of them are heading to Norway

They do and that is one of the few reasons why sales hold up in Norway along with short delivery times. Tesla are very vulnerable in what remains of their European market.

By the classic 1990s/2000s definition, an ICE awd has a driveshaft connecting the front and back axles.

4WD has a transfer case for low and high range.

"You can nitpick on spurious grounds all you like".

Lol, no idea what that is meant to mean.

Was simply offering a nostalgic viewpoint of what was accepted as a 4WD/AWD back when we all used to enjoy the stink of filling up our cars. As a former 4WD enthusiast, many a debate was had on this subject.

Thanks @antseanoifig - finally an actual expert on this topic is contributing.

Please forward LinkedIn profiles guys, and we'll settle it with some basic checking here.

1 of you is an expert, and the other isn't. Or maybe both of you are, or maybe neither of you are.

How are we to know? You both sound knowledgeable but I'm going with @antseanoifig because he's shouting a lot less about how he's an expert and the rest of us are blind or deranged.

So according to you the opinion of people who drive Tesla is somewhat less valuable than yours? Quoting you here: How bizarre.

My understanding is that Tesla, Hyundai/Kia and VW typically use the rear motor as the primary drive unit. How they do it also differs. Tesla does it electronically while Hyundai/Kia do it mechaniically by disengaging the front wheels via a clutch.

Meanwhile the likes of Audi & Volvo/Polestar prefer FWD. This is not uniform across all models though.

The point you're missing is that we have absolutely no evidence one way or the other that you have any of the experience or knowledge you claim. That is at the same time the beauty and the curse of an online bulletin board I guess.

Anto sounds credible, in fact some would say more credible than yourself, but it is nuanced I'd imagine. Someone could come on here and spout anything they liked, using fodder served up from any number of AI tools going back years to make one sound convincing and somehow authoritative on any random given topic.

The reality is we're all bumbling around here offering opinion in an unsubstantiated capacity, no more no less. Unless you want to pop up a LinkedIn profile with references we'll all just tip along wondering idlily is yer man serious etc. But it is entertaining to see how openly annoyed you get when you're not taken as seriously as you believe you are 😄