Could Tesla gamify electric vehicle data to accelerate Full Self Driving?
Could Tesla gamify electric vehicle data to accelerate Full Self Driving?
Could Tesla gamify electric vehicle data to accelerate Full Self Driving?
By Bride Schmidt
May 4, 2020
Summary
A new series of tweets from Elon Musk has again highlighted the forward thinking that EV enthusiasts say will enable Tesla to remain ahead of the autonomous driving game.
Tesla electric vehicles are already a cut above the average run-of-the-mill car, and are embodied in Musk's approach to making driving more than just getting from A to B. "The Goal for the infotainment system is what's the most amount of fun you can have in a car?" said Musk at the company's second quarter earnings call in 2019.
From Tesla's "Caraoke" singing game to the addition of cult "Run and gun" action game Cuphead in version 10 of Tesla vehicle software, the Californian car maker has already taken several steps towards this, to the point owners on social media are saying their kids prefer playing video games in their car, blurring the line between video console and car console.
There's another side to the gamification of Tesla cars that sheds light on a possible new direction for Tesla, and underscores again how well prepared the EV maker is to adapt to the current Covid-19 economic climate and what we increasingly understand will be a very different world post-Covid.
On Sunday evening, a tweet from Musk about the longevity and popularity of open-world building block game Minecraft highlighted a possible strategy to accelerate the implementation of full-featured Full Self Driving, igniting discussion about the prospect.
The suggestion is that by "Gamifying" driving - perhaps by allowing front cameras on Tesla cars to display the road ahead on the vehicle's touchscreen display and somehow overlaying "Power-ups" - driving a Tesla becomes fun.
Why? Because as Musk noted on Wednesday's Q1 2020 earnings call, and has been flagged by VW CEO Herbert Diess as a headache for other car makers, Tesla is already collecting data from 1 million intersections a month now that its latest FSD feature, stopping automatically at traffic lights and stop signs, is live in the US. Soon, this will rapidly exceed 1 billion as Tesla rolls out the capability to overseas markets.
By making the tedious task of driving into a game, Tesla could encourage drivers to collect data from the intersection less travelled, further accelerating FSD by filling in information gaps.
The rollout of full-featured FSD will only be approved by regulators if it can be proven beyond a doubt to be safer than humans driving, and the more data that can be collected and processed by Tesla the sooner this is likely to happen.
Would a gamified feature become part of Tesla's Premium Connectivity option, in effect meaning people pay to help Tesla collect data?
Reference
Schmidt, B. S. B. (2020, May 4). Could Tesla gamify electric vehicle data to accelerate Full Self Driving? Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://thedriven.io/2020/05/04/could-tesla-gamify-electric-vehicle-data-to-accelerate-full-self-driving/