Musk reveals when Tesla full self-driving beta may reach Australia

Tesla may release the right-hand drive version of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta program later in 2022, CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter to a local Tesla vlogger on Wednesday.

The comment came in response to a thread started by French software engineer and AI researcher François Chollet, who has 300,000 followers on Twitter and claimed that autonomous driving is still unachievable in the short term.

“Mass deployment of self-driving cars was less than 5 years away in 2016. Then in 2021 it was 2-3 years away. In 2024 it will be 1 year away. Zeno’s AI milestone,” said Chollet.

Musk chimed in: “You obviously haven’t tried Tesla FSD,” he responded.

Tesla has been beta testing its Full Self-Driving program since late 2020. Musk believes that eventually, FSD will be deliver the “biggest increase in asset value” in history.

Currently, there are 100,000 drivers in the FSD beta program, but they are all in North America – and therefore only in left-hand drive.

Tesla in the Gong, an Australian Tesla owner and content creator, jumped in to ask Musk when the program would be opened to right-hand drive markets.

“ETA on Right Hand Drive Beta FSD ? We would love to experience the magic,” he said.

“Probably later this year,” said Musk.

Whether Musk intends this for Australia or other RHD markets is not clear, although Musk has responded to Tesla in the Gong previously and may be aware of his location.

“This is huge news Elon. Which is the order of countries that can be expected to get the FSD. Please say Australia,” the latter said in reply.

Self-driving in Tesla electric cars

Tesla customers can already purchase the Full Self-Driving suite for $A10,100, however it is not yet fully featured. Purchasing the suite ensures the most up-to-date hardware, and allows certain features including changing lanes on highways, auto parking, summon in a car park and stopping and starting at traffic lights and stop signs.

It does not include auto turning and steering on city streets, however the beta program does.

What is a Tesla Safety Score, and why is it important?

Drivers chosen to take part in the FSD beta program must have a near-perfect safety score, and are struck from the program if they do not fully supervise the car while driving with the beta software turned on.

It follows a driver’s metrics including forward-collision warnings, sudden braking, aggressive turning, unsafe following and forced autopilot disengagement.

Where the safety score system is available, drivers are assigned a score between 0 and 100 based on these metrics, with 100 being a 100% perfect score.

What is the difference with Tesla self-driving?

Taking a different route to other self-driving programs which largely rely on pre-mapped and geo-fenced areas, Tesla hopes to achieve autonomous driving that can respond to unknowns by “seeing” and labeling objects and predicting the location of objects such as pedestrians so that it can operate without human supervision in regions it has no been before.

But first, it must ensure it will be far safer than human drivers. At the last Tesla earnings day, Musk said Tesla will do this by introducing an autonomous robot to solve what is essentially a complex artificial intelligence problem.

Tesla will hold its second AI Day in August. Stay tuned.

This article has been updated to correct the date FSd beta could become available is 2022 not 2023.