What’s The Advantage Of Tesla’s 1.3 Billion Miles Of Data? Bloomberg Says…

December 31, 20167 years ago James Ayre 0 Comments

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Tesla has reportedly now gathered more than 1.3 billion miles of data from Autopilot-equipped vehicles, data that’s been obtained whether Autopilot was being actively used or not. What’s the value of all of this data? Does it give the company a significant advantage in the self-driving sector over its potential competitors?

That line of thought is something we covered previously when comparing Tesla’s self-driving approach with Google’s, but it was explored in a recent article from Bloomberg as well that seems worth discussing here. There are some interesting quotes from various sources that know the topic well.

Here are the parts in question that I’m referring to:

“Of course, not all miles are created equal: there are semi-autonomous as well as fully self-driving ones, real-world vs simulated, highway vs those racked up in tricky urban environments. Still, Tesla is ‘in a very unique position to push the state of the art of algorithmic driving and machine learning in personal transport,’ said Adam Jonas, the lead analyst at Morgan Stanley for autos and shared mobility, in a recent note to clients. …

“’Whether they are ahead or not, Tesla certainly has tons of data,’ said Richard Wallace, director of transportation systems analysis at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ‘They will be able to analyze that six ways from Sunday and continue to tweak their algorithms.’ …

“’Most car companies and tech companies don’t want to give away how far along they are. Elon, of course, is the exception — he’s always out there claiming how far ahead of everyone else he is,’ stated Karl Brauer, executive publisher for Kelley Blue Book. As companies boost their intelligence gathering, ‘the level of data that will be generated is on a scale that is hard for us to conceive. This is the tip of the iceberg.'”

Nothing necessarily “new” in those comments, but still worth covering. To my eyes, Tesla holds a significant advantage already because of its approach, but, more importantly, the advantage will widen to a substantial degree with the launch of the Model 3 late next year (late 2017). With 500,000 Model 3s hitting the road in just a year or so, all loaded with a hardware suite allowing for fully autonomous driving, all silently gathering data to be used for the refinement of the company’s software, the company really shouldn’t have too much trouble outclassing its competition.