Tesla ( TSLA ) is rising on expectations that the Trump administration will make it easier for Tesla's self-driving technology, which is still not working, to be approved by the government.
Currently, self-driving technology is addressed at the state level, with each state having its own laws to approve self-driving systems on its roads.
During a call following Tesla's final earnings results, CEO Elon Musk, who financially supported Donald Trump's re-election and “fully endorses him,” indicated that he would work with the new federal government to get the self-driving license approved. I'm going.
Now, Bloomberg reports that Trump's transition team is discussing making it a priority:
Members of President-elect Donald Trump's team have told advisers that they plan to develop a framework for fully self-driving vehicles, which is one of the priorities of the Department of Transportation, according to people familiar with the matter.
The news sent Tesla's stock up 7%, or an increase of 470 billion in value.
That's surprising because up until now, the control aspect of Tesla's self-driving effort hasn't been seen as a major hurdle – making the technology work still seems to be the biggest hurdle.
Tesla has been wrong about its self-driving timeline too many times to count, but the latest is to release unsupervised self-driving in California and Texas in Q2 2025.
Ashok Elluswamy, head of FSD at Tesla, said Tesla's goal is to get more than 600,000 miles between critical failures, based on NHTSA data on accidents between miles driven by people.
Tesla hasn't released any data about its self-driving effort, so the best available data is sketchy. That data currently shows about 241 miles between significant discontinuities:
Tesla would need a 2,500x improvement in miles between collisions to reach the safer-than-human standard, which was the goal before getting regulatory approval.
Electrek's Take
That sounds like a bigger hurdle than getting regulatory approval.
I actually agree with the Trump administration that it makes more sense to have a federal regulatory framework for self-driving programs rather than a state level.
But I don't see how it will help Tesla since there is no clear way for Tesla to reach a safer level than a human in its current form anytime soon.
At the current pace, a 2,500x improvement will take 10 years and we are yet to see a significant acceleration in the pace of improvement.
FTC: We use auto affiliate links to earn income. More.
