The Impact of Autopilot and Full Self Driving Technology on the Vehicle Industry

Saturday - August 5 2023, 08:57 UTC - 1 year ago

Robotaxi and Robotrucking could be the most revolutionary change in the vehicle industry to date. Autopilot and Full Self Driving are already being used on cars with massive success, and the Robotrucking industry could revolutionize supply chain transport with a potential of $150 billion in profits a year.

Tesla will succeed with Full Self Driving and Teslabots. It may still be two or three more years until the full robotaxi level is reached. It could even be five years but the progress is and will speed up this year and beyond. Robotaxi could require the system being 10 to 100 times safer than the average human driver The economic impact of a very comfortable drive that is as safe or twice as safe as an average human driver will be very large.

The autopilot and FSD systems already improve the driving experience and improve safety while still requiring the human driver to pay attention and occasionally intervene. However, FSD and Autopilot are driven all over the USA, Canada, Europe and Asia. Autopilot has been used for over ten billion miles of driving and FSD beta has been used for over 320 million miles. Tesla FSD beta is now adding about 50 million miles every month.

The rate of miles driven and the compute power for AI training are both increasing exponentially. Robotaxi could increase the value of car by 3 to 5 times based upon the hours it can be driven. However, many people will choose to continue to drive themselves even if it costs more. People buy luxury cars when they could buy and use an adequate basic economy car. Many people in New York still choose to drive cars despite a very good public transit system and taxis. This is in spite of high costs and difficulties parking. Tesla's AI team recently announced that the software can train with Youtube videos of driving. This means the system is independent of camera positions. This is critical for being able to license FSD and Autopilot to other car makers. The different cars can have cameras in other locations.

RoboTrucking .

Robotrucking will be more impactful than Robotaxi in many ways. If truck drivers are replaced for all 30 million large trucks and perhaps another 100 million small and medium sized commercial trucks in the world this will transform the supply chain. The transport costs in the supply chain could eventually be reduced by 80% or more. Driving speed for delivering cargo could increase from 55 mph to 110 mph or more. Also, the robotruck could drive 23 hours a day and only stop for recharging. Truck fleet owners will not hesitate to replace human drivers once the systems are good enough. 70% of drivers could be replaced once there is a driving system that could safely platoon trucks.

As stated before, Tesla's AI team recently announced that the software can train with Youtube videos of driving. This means the system is independent of camera positions. $150,000 semi trucks can get cameras and self driving computers added for about $20,000 to $30000 or $5,000 per year plus the hardware. This means the existing fleet can be rapidly converted to remove the driver for a 4-12 month return on investment.

$5,000 per year made on all 30 million trucks would be $150 billion per year. This would be over ten times the current profits at Tesla.

$150 billion per year in profits would mean a 10X in value. This would not need as many batteries. It would only need 30 million robotruck conversion kits (hardware 4 or 5 chips, cameras etc' and software) robots in the fleet would add another $20 billion in annual revenue.