Tesla is implementing Mobileye Autopilot’s system capability faster than other automakers
Mobileye develops "vision-based advanced driver assistance systems" to be used in autonomous vehicles, during a Q3 conference call, the company confirmed that Tesla is the only automaker currently using the company’s autonomous drive system to its limits. Mobileye also noted that “True Autopilot” would begin rolling out slowly next year, and will require the integration of an 8-camera suite, radar & sonar systems, and 5 EyeQ3 chips. The rollout of autopilot software will apparently take several years to be completed.
According to a post on the Tesla Motors Club forum: “Mobileye has 2 production agreements for semi-autonomous driving for 2016 (presumably one is Tesla), another manufacturer coming on line in 2017 and one more in 2018.” The conference call also revealed that Mobileye’s Q3 2015 revenue ($70.6m) was 104% higher than Q3 2014’s ($34.7m).

Just listened to the Mobileye 3Q conference call (Nov 3). Some notes WRT autonomous driving and Tesla:



Current technology is good only for lane keeping assist (what Telsa is delivering now). Mobileye noted that Tesla uniquely is willing to push the system faster and to its limits more than any other automaker.



True Autopilot will be rolled out starting next year and will require an 8 camera suite along with integration with radar and sonar sensors. This will require 5 eyeQ3 chips. Autopilot software will take many years to fully roll out.



In the future, a single eyeQ4 chip will handle 8 cameras.



Current Mobileye technology builds on 16 years of standard programming techniques, but adds a deep learning network (neural net) for free space identification and path prediction. Mobileye software also currently handles reducing speed on curves and smooth speed modulation when cars cut in front, etc. The deep learning network is a traditional neural net setup in that it does NOT learn in real time. It is a supervised learning system that requires full sensor suite recording and processing by a big computer array before creating a model that can be put into their chips.



Mobileye has 2 production agreements for semi-autonomous driving for 2016 (presumably one is Tesla), another manufacturer coming on line in 2017 and one more in 2018.



Tesla's current self learning capability is Tesla specific. Mobileye is not involved in this at all. Mobileye gets its training data when OEMs do validation testing. I guess the big automakers do a lot of validation testing and Mobileye thinks this is sufficient for their purposes (they pretty much dismissed the Tesla fleet info and said that the validation data set was huge).



My comments based on this and Elon's Autopilot conference call:



It is clear that Tesla isn't just taking what Mobileye is giving them. According to Elon, they have augmented the base Mobileye system with high resolution GPS maps, driver assisted learning, fleet learning, and rapid updates. The high resolution GPS maps, along with driver input, allows the car to behave correctly in ambiguous situations. If Mobileye technology is confused about what is going on in a particular area, it will always be confused in that area (barring very slowly changing model updates which may come out once a year (my estimate)). So Tesla tracks what the human does in that area, averaged over the fleet. If the Mobileye model says to follow the right lane marker at a certain GPS co-ordinate and exit the freeway, while the driver grabs the wheel and keeps the car on the freeway, then the Tesla software learns that behavior for next time and additionally uploads that info for fleet learning. According to Elon, fleet learning updates could occur weekly (presumably more often in the heavier traveled areas).



In my opinion, this is a huge advantage for Tesla. Mobileye touts their millions of miles driven for their deep learning model, yet Tesla accumulates a million miles of driving per DAY across the fleet.



According to Elon, Tesla has about 50 software people working on autopilot, and about 100 working on hardware. I don't know if this was a mis-statement, but that strikes me as odd. What are all those hardware people doing, exactly? Hmmm.



From the forum comments, it seems that Tesla's Autopilot is pretty good already. It is a real step up in functionality (it is a God send for people stuck in stop and go freeway traffic everywhere), that will get better over time. So, another major win for Tesla.



It is also clear that another hardware refresh is going to occur sometime, probably next year, to at least add more cameras.