Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the American electric vehicle maker has entered into talks with a ‘major’ automaker to license its self-driving technology, Electrek has reported.
Musk said in his remarks during Tesla’s earnings call last year that he wanted to ‘strongly emphasise’ that Tesla is open to licensing its self-driving technology to other automakers, though now Musk has revealed more development, saying that Tesla is in early talks with “a major OEM” for the licensing of its Autopilot and Full Self Driving suites, the website reported.
The identity of the major automaker in talks with Tesla was not identified, however Musk said that licensing the FSD suite was also part of the plan. “We’re not trying to keep this to ourselves. We’re more than happy to license it to others,” Musk said.
Musk also revealed that Tesla customers will be allowed to transfer their vehicle’s FSD suite to another Tesla as a “one-time amnesty”, only in the third quarter of this year, allowing existing Tesla owners to transfer the capability to a newer vehicle and not have it locked in the older model, The Verge reported.
The carmaker’s autonomous driving systems, Autopilot and Full Self Driving have not had the easiest of times, however; it stopped the rollout of FSD Beta for the United States and Canada in February this year until a firmware update could be issued.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the US said the driver assistance system could cause crashes when in operation, and ordered Tesla to issue a recall.
Autonomous driving isn’t the only area where Tesla is contributing its technology to other carmakers. Nissan is among the latest to announce that it will be adopting Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), after Mercedes-Benz and Volvo had announced the same move days prior; the carmakers will apply the charging standard in North America from 2025.
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I think it is a good move. More cars having the same SW, they can be synchronized better, more training data can be collected to improve the AI capability.
In addition, Tesla is great as a SW company but not the best when it comes to hardware quality finishing (fit and finishing of cars). Thus let the legacy automakers to prepare the hardware while Tesla to provide the SW.
Only problem is will the OEM roll out updates as quick as Tesla? It’s like Google stock Android and other OEMs. They are usually late in implementing updates compared to Google itself.
Meanwhile in USA the Tesla is disclaiming their cars have full autonomous self driving function after yet more fatal accidents from their cars. So are they marketing this “feature” to those region where laws are lax and no actions will be taken or risk offending Elon?
Great move by Tesla.
Sounds like future cars will be privacy nightmares.
Your self driving autonomous tech is at what Lv. since we know Mercedes will be the first launching Lv.3 car this year.
More data equals better autonomous driving. Longer term target is with robo (driverless) taxis whose demand is “infinite”. That is one of the reasons why Tesla keeps slashing prices, to buy driving data.
Good thing about Tesla is that your 2020 Tesla Y will get OTA updates to make your autopilot equivalent to a 2023 MY, hardware shortcomings (faster CPU, better cameras and not hard limitations) notwithstanding.
Contrast with traditional manufacturers, how your car leaves the delivery dealership is usually how it is until you sell it.
we (humans) started out by walking, then we discovered the joy of driving. now we want neither! wth