Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) fleet has crossed the 10 billion mile mark, according to the automaker's updated safety page. The achievement represents a massive acceleration in data collection — the fleet was logging roughly 29 million miles per day by late April, up from 14 million miles per day at the start of the year.
The company's FSD system is still not ready for unsupervised driving, despite reaching this milestone. A goalpost Musk set himself earlier this year as the data milestone needed for 'safe unsupervised' driving was 10 billion miles.
Tesla uses different methods to count crashes than the NHTSA data it compares to, creating a misleading picture. The company frames this as evidence the system is dramatically safer than human driving.
However, experts have long criticized Tesla's safety methodology, arguing that it's not a reliable measure of safety.
The 10 billion mile figure sounds impressive, but data collection at this scale is only valuable for training neural networks. It doesn't necessarily mean the system is ready to take full responsibility for driving.
Musk has now pushed unsupervised FSD for consumer Tesla vehicles to Q4 2026 at the earliest, and even that timeline comes with heavy caveats.
Meanwhile, Waymo, which operates at Level 4 with no human behind the wheel, has expanded to 10 cities with driverless operations and reports fewer crashes than human drivers across 127 million miles of autonomous driving.
The difference between Tesla's approach and Waymo's is that Waymo takes legal responsibility for the driving. Tesla does not for its 'Full Self-Driving'. This raises questions about accountability and safety in the industry.
Ultimately, reaching a milestone like 10 billion miles doesn't automatically make an autonomous system safe or ready for widespread use.
While data collection is crucial for training autonomous systems, it's not a guarantee of safety or readiness.
