What We’re Reading

• Police Are Requesting Self-Driving Car Footage for Video Evidence (Bloomberg, June 29, 2023)

  While city officials may not be thrilled with the proliferation of robotaxis on San Francisco streets, the police are seeking to capitalize on their presence as they realize the evidentiary potential of the video the self-driving cars capture as they drive around the city.

  This potential was highlighted in a recent case in which the police sought footage from Waymo’s self-driving cars to try to identify a murder suspect. In their warrant application to obtain the footage, the police cited “probable cause that the Waymo vehicles driving around the area have video surveillance of the suspect vehicle, suspects, crime scene, and possibly the victims in this case.” A Court approved the warrant, and Waymo produced the video. At least ten other warrants have been approved by courts in San Francisco and Maricopa County, Arizona for police to obtain video footage from Waymo and its main rival, Cruise.

  But privacy advocates call for caution. A fellow with the Social Science Research Council, for example, worries that allowing “surveillance cameras on wheels” will compromise the public’s right to “go about our business in our day-to-day lives without being surveilled unless we are suspected of a crime.” For their part, Waymo and Cruise both claim to prioritize privacy by responding narrowly to law enforcement requests for information and only as authorized by a court.

  🚸The Guardian offers another take on these privacy implications in “TechScape: Self-driving cars are here and they’re watching you,” published just yesterday.

• Tesla FSD V12 Will No Longer Be Beta: Elon Musk (InsideEVs, June 30, 2023)

  Since the release of FSD Beta in October 2020, Elon Musk has made numerous promises that Tesla would achieve “full self-driving capability.” In more recent months, Musk has repeatedly tied that capability to the highly anticipated release of FSD v12, but Tesla has yet to deliver that update or even provide an ETA. Then, last week, Musk committed in a Twitter exchange that v12 “won’t be beta,” and left open the possibility that the update will be available as early as “later this year.”

As in the past, Musk left himself wiggle room, still stopping short of committing to a delivery date. Tesla also has plenty of “decimal room” to move with its updates before getting to v12, as it is only on v11.4.

Will exiting beta mode really mean anything for FSD? As this author notes, “[b]y ditching ‘beta’ from its name, Tesla’s FSD might bring a massive improvement to the way it operates, all while being a big show of confidence from the American EV maker. It’s no secret that the Austin-based firm has improved its system over the years, with the ultimate goal of offering owners a hands-free experience, but as it stands today, that promise is still quite a long way away.”

• Leaked Tesla documents reveal a major issue with one of the company’s most talked-about vehicles: ‘I am astounded’ (Yahoo!, July 1, 2023)

  Tesla aficionados are familiar with waiting, whether for FSD v12 (see above) or for the OEM’s long-promised electrified pickup truck, the Cybertruck. “To date, it is believed that more than 1.5 million people have placed preorders for the Cybertruck, which Tesla recently said was expected to go into production late in 2023. However, according to leaked documents acquired by the German newspaper Handelsblatt, they may have to continue waiting.” Those documents apparently reveal significant issues with the Cybertruck prototype’s braking, sealing to keep out noise and weather, and suspension—problems that one expert described as “classic mechanical automotive engineering challenges” that are “astonishing” to find unresolved at this stage of development.