Tesla Reveals How Many Miles Are Driven Between Collisions

In the Q3 2021 report, Tesla has included a chart that shows an average distance between collisions when driving with or without Autopilot.

It closely reminds us of our own chart that we built over a few years to compare the data and see whether the company is progressing or not.

Tesla’s chart confirms that the new definition of “Autopilot technology” is equal to the previous “Autopilot engaged,” as the data point for Q2 2021 is on the Autopilot line (we were not 100% sure about that three weeks ago).

Nonetheless, Tesla has not included the category for Autopilot “off”, but active safety features “on.”

The problem with the evaluation of the progress is that too many external factors might significantly affect the results.

In the past three years (2018-2021), the results were similar with some increases and decreases. It will be interesting to see whether we will see a consistent, step increase at some point in the future.

The results are better than in the case of an average car in the U.S., but here again, we don’t have data for new cars (or cars of similar age as Teslas), which would be also higher than the NHTSA’s total average.

Meanwhile, Tesla expands its Full Self Driving (FSD) test program for more beta testers. The company must be careful with the rollout as any stream of serious accidents would for sure catch the NHTSA’s attention and potentially even put the service on hold.

“In October, we started to expand our FSD City Streets beta to more drivers, based on demonstrated driver safety and attentiveness measured through their “Safety Score”.We continue to monitor fleet data closely to help facilitate a smooth rollout.”