# Tesla Made Autopilot Self Driving Chips



## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

Hi,

I just got my Model 3 the second week of November. When I was waiting for Tesla to complete the sales paper work, I struck up a conversation with the staff there. We were discussing Auto-Pilot and I asked since I did not purchase EAP, would I need to bring the car in for hardware to be added at a later time. She indicated no, and that all Tesla's come equipped with the hardware. I nodded and said "That's right, they are NVIDIA boards." To my surprise she said no longer, they are made by Tesla now. I said isn't that months away with Tesla making their own chips / boards to put in the car? She then asked when my car was manufactured. I said October. She said it should have the Tesla made hardware now and that Tesla moves quickly with changes.

I've seen articles recently where Elon says they are 6 months away from adding this into vehicles. Is it possible the new hardware is already going into new cars now? Would that explain Tesla increasing the price of EAP to $7,000 after sale (assuming the new chips can do EAP and FSD, the old price of EAP @$5,000 + FSD @$3,000 = $8,000 isn't that far off from the new EAP price). Thoughts?


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## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

Take what Tesla's customer-facing employees say with a generous heaping helping of salt.


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

rebels23 said:


> To my surprise she said no longer, they are made by Tesla now. I said isn't that months away with Tesla making their own chips / boards to put in the car? She then asked when my car was manufactured. I said October. She said it should have the Tesla made hardware now and that Tesla moves quickly with changes.


I think she was anticipating a lot on future changes which should arrive in 2019.
By the way, you are not at all informed about the exact configuration you have bought with your car.
In my opinion, that should change quickly as customers need to know those details and the exact possibilities/extensibilities of their vehicles, like on PCs, Notebooks or Smartphones.
Future AP releases will come soon, will your car be compatible with them ? Could you improve your current hardware to get an up-to-date car ? That's fair questions!!


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## BigBri (Jul 16, 2016)

The Tesla chip so far has only been discussed in a FSD context. It's not clear if the chip will bring any features to AP or not. I'd speculate not as they seem to be baking the cost of the computer upgrade into the FSD package.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

@rebels23,

PSA: Don't blindly trust the knowledge of Tesla representatives

I've added your post to the list.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

BigBri said:


> The Tesla chip so far has only been discussed in a FSD context. It's not clear if the chip will bring any features to AP or not. I'd speculate not as they seem to be baking the cost of the computer upgrade into the FSD package.


Elon Musk is already on record saying that the upgrade is not needed for Autopilot.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1027314633101598721


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

BigBri said:


> I'd speculate not as they seem to be baking the cost of the computer upgrade into the FSD package





garsh said:


> Elon Musk is already on record saying that the upgrade is not needed for Autopilot


Both of you are fully correct!
But this is only a marketing approach !
Technically, the AP function is loaded on this board and a lot of tests have been conducted to verify that the same functions react the same way on the new hardware.
It is planned to introduce this hardware on all cars in 2019 and we could buy one without knowing exactly which board is inside! That was the question of @rebels23 and apparently nobody was able to answer him clearly...


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## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

@Samsaggace  - Yes!

When I got home, I did some research and realized that what Tesla told me was probably not accurate.

I think the intention is to have one board be able to support Autopilot and Full Self Driving. Tesla has probably realized to get to Level 5 driving they would need a lot more processing power, but gave it a try with the existing boards. Not to mention they aren't as nimble with changes if they stay with a third party.

I really do like the Auto Pilot and am still contemplating on purchasing it after the trial. But I'd much rather pay one set price ($7-$8K) in one shot knowing I will get a functional Autopilot + FSD.


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

rebels23 said:


> I think the intention is to one board be able to support Autopilot and Full Self Driving.


You're are fully right !
Today, there is only one board generally named HW2.5 on which AP2 (Enhanced AP) V9 is running. See below








Tomorrow (Q1 2019), this board will be replaced plug-to-plug by a new one named HW3. That will be done on ALL new cars.
This board will run AP and maybe in the future some FSD functions.
The only problem is that we don't know if we order a new car how it will be equiped. That's a kind of lottery...


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Samsaggace said:


> Tomorrow (Q1 2019).....


factoring in ElonTime™ (2019Q1 ~ 2019Q3)

adjust expectations accordingly


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> adjust expectations accordingly


Of course !


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## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

@Samsaggace - I think we are getting closer to HW3 based on Elon's recent comments with the 'sleeping drunk driver incident.' Tesla has trained larger neural networks but may not have the ability to deploy them due to computational limits. With HW3 we will see a lot more capabilities released. Elon back in October did say:

_"[It's] very important to emphasize that the only thing that needs to change between a car that's produced today and a car that's going to be produced in the second quarter of next year is probably the autopilot computer. This is a simply change that takes about half an hour to upgrade the computer. Anyone will be able to upgrade their car to Full Self-Driving capability with a simple service visit. Basically anything made in the last two years will be upgradable to Full Self-Driving. So its better important to emphasize that there's no need to wait until that comes out because its just a very simple plug and play change to get to Full Self-Driving. *Anyone who has made for Full Self-Driving option will get it done for free.* It really ends up being a discount on future capability."_

The comment in bold is really exciting if true. Imagine a free upgrade to HW3 just by bringing it into the Service Center. Free for folks who have bought EAP at $5,000 or at $5,500 after the free trials? That would be awesome.

FSD is happening in increments. What we see in EAP today is already a sub set of capabilities full blown FSD would need.


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## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

I just re-read that quote by Elon, I think he meant folks who have purchased FSD will get the upgrade for free....so not as excited anymore 

I am curious on how people with existing HW2.5 would go to HW3. I'd imagine Tesla wants people to go on to HW3 for the larger neural network. They will want that data.


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

@rebels23 - I fully agree in all your first statements. But I think you misunderstand Elon's sentence.


rebels23 said:


> Free for folks who have bought EAP at $5,000 or at $5,500 after the free trials?


Elon was talking about the previous FSD option at $3000 on top of AP option at $5000. That FSD option is no more available for few months and was never implemented. It's only the (few) customers having bought that potential FSD option who are eligible to free HW3 upgrade, not the AP option owners. 
The trick is that all the improvements towards FSD capability have been made in AP itself, especially in V9 version. We can expect that it will be the same for futures ones, like those for 'first responders recognition' you mentioned. But, step by step, those improvements should not be able to run on previous HW2.5 board and the upgrade will be mandatory for those wanting to run new AP functions.
As I strongly emphasize, such easily-swappable HW2.5/HW3 board is running AP only for the time being. Unfortunately, free upgrade is not available for people using that function (as of today). Only new owners if they are fortunate enough to have their cars produced after upgrade on assembly lines will enjoy for free such new AP capabilities (and the happy few FSD option owners).


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

rebels23 said:


> I am curious on how people with existing HW2.5 would go to HW3. I'd imagine Tesla wants people to go on to HW3 for the larger neural network. They will want that data.


Perfectly right !


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

rebels23 said:


> I just re-read that quote by Elon, I think he meant folks who have purchased FSD will get the upgrade for free....so not as excited anymore


Yep, sorry. 

The good news is that the extra computing power isn't required for EAP, so you shouldn't be missing out on anything.


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

garsh said:


> The good news is that the extra computing power isn't required for EAP,


As it is today, but not for future improvements. EAP has no real definition, you need to specify V9.xx


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Samsaggace said:


> As it is today, but not for future improvements. EAP has no real definition, you need to specify V9.xx


Elon Musk has already stated that a hardware upgrade won't be required for EAP. I think it's reasonable to assume therefore that EAP will end up being defined by what the current hardware is capable of operating.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1027314633101598721


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

garsh said:


> Elon Musk has already stated that a hardware upgrade won't be required for EAP.


Sorry @garsh I thought we were on this forum to exchange views about the current and future functions. The tweet you mentioned is rather old. In a recent incident about "sleeping drunk driver", Elon said that "first responders recognition" will be implemented in the near future. We may assume that it will be implemented on top of current V9 AP. How you will call it : EAP, EAP+, AP3,...? It's almost impossible to close like that such a key software function like EAP.
I can understand that HW2/2.5 retrofit could be a huge cost for Tesla (around $2000 per car - 200 M$ for 100,000 M3/MS with AP) but I think that current and future customers deserve more clarifications on those aspects.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Samsaggace said:


> Sorry @garsh I thought we were on this forum to exchange views about the current and future functions.


We are. Just because I disagree with you and provide evidence for my reasoning doesn't mean that I don't appreciate your differing viewpoint.


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## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

HW3 will be able to do do over 2,000 frames a second with full redundancy and fail-over, whereas the old HW can only do 200 frames per second. HW 3 will give you an order of magnitude more processing and you can run all the cameras at primary full resolution with the complex neural net.

The statement that EAP won't require HW3 will probably remain true.......for a while. We know that currently there is more in their neural net and opportunites that are limited by processing power. There will need to be a point in time where Tesla may need to draw the line between EAP features and FSD features. I hope they can make it easy and allow everyone to upgrade to HW3 for a reasonable price.

Tesla AP 2.5 currently has around 12 TOPS (Teraflops) neural network performance. 
Tesla AP3 will have around 120 TOPS.
Nvidia Drive Pegasus slated for Q1 2019 has 320 TOPS, which would be 2.5x AP3.

This is all getting very interesting!


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## rebels23 (Nov 24, 2018)

@Samsaggace - I too would like Tesla to provide more clarifications on how this is all going to work. Mostly because I am impatient and not knowing is giving me anxiety.  Honestly, they may not even know themselves yet.

But I understand why they are doing the things they are doing now (i.e. with pricing). The struggle to show profit or face demise has recently been at the top of their priority list. I believe Elon in his heart of hearts would love to retroactively set people up with HW3. But that would probably not be good business.  I have faith that Elon and Tesla will make the path reasonable


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## Samsaggace (Jul 27, 2018)

@rebels23 You summarize in better English exactly the same view than I ! Nothing to add, perfectly correct !


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