Expert says Tesla is getting very close to unsupervised FSD

Investing.com -- Tesla’s progress toward fully autonomous driving may be accelerating faster than investors realise, according to Piper Sandler.

Analyst Alexander Potter said in a note that the firm’s latest discussion with the creator of the FSD Community Tracker shows that Tesla is “getting very close to unsupervised FSD,” based on sharp improvements in performance metrics.

Piper Sandler notes that the tracker’s core measure, “miles to critical disengagement,” showed a “>20x improvement after FSD v14.1.x was released in October,” rising from 441 miles in the prior version to “9200+ miles.”

Potter stated it is “the biggest sequential improvement in four years of data collection.”

Additional data from Austin is said to have strengthened the signal.

According to Piper Sandler, “Austin data imply 40k miles between crashes (7 NHTSA incidents in ~280k miles)… at 13k miles/year, this implies an FSD-equipped car can go ~3 years without crashing.”

The analysts say tracker data showing “9k+ miles between disengagements” is broadly consistent with the Austin findings.

While the subsequent software version, v14.2.x, appears to show weaker results, falling to “1,500 miles-to-critical-DE,” Piper Sandler warns that “only some of the recent down-tick in performance… is likely ‘real.’”

The firm believes the deterioration is “probably due to a lack of data for the new version,” noting that although 17,000 miles have been gathered, “only 4500 miles can be used to track critical disengagements,” and that “70%+ of the miles in the Tracker come from an A.I. device that doesn’t log critical DE’s.”

Piper Sandler expects performance to rise again as data accumulate, adding that “some of the recent backsliding might not be fully fixed until v14.3 is released.”

“Tesla is likely very close to removing safety operators from Austin robo-taxis,” concluded Piper.

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