Tesla Autopilot has driven over 1.2B estimated miles

This blog post aggregates various publicly available data sources to estimate and visualize the following categories of miles driven in Tesla vehicles:

1. The total miles driven by Tesla vehicles overall.
2. Miles driven under Autopilot (on hardware versions 1 and 2+).
3. Miles driven in “shadow mode” on hardware version 2+.

Here is a real-time autopilot mileage counter estimated based on aggregation of publicly available data and assuming current vehicle production and delivery rates. I’ll keep this blog post, visualizations, and mileage tracker updated when new information becomes available.

Current Estimated Autopilot Miles:

I describe the details of how I painstakingly got the estimates below, but before that, let’s look at the numbers. The following is a plot of total Autopilot miles and Autopilot miles on the first and second generation of Autopilot hardware. Total estimated Autopilot miles to date exceeds 1.2 billion.

Next is an animated version of the plot above which helps capture how quickly Autopilot miles racked up over a period of less than 3 years.

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The following is a plot of total miles traveled in all Tesla vehicles and total miles traveled in all Autopilot hardware version 2+ vehicles. The latter I refer to as “shadow mode” because the data streams in these vehicles (whether under manual or Autopilot control) is available to be used for training the neural networks that perform the various components of the perception-control task.

Next is an animated version of the plot above which helps capture how quickly Tesla miles racked up in recent years.

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Details on Estimating Autopilot Miles

I started from thedata aggregated here on the number of Tesla vehicles delivered by quarter and organized by Autopilot hardware version.

Next, I did an estimate of per-day deliveries dating back to 2008 in a way that fits the quarterly reported delivery numbers. The resulting data can be downloaded here: tesla_vehicle_estimates.csv .

Finally, I enumerated the number of miles driven in each vehicle under manual and Autopilot control. The resulting data can be downloaded here: tesla_autopilot_miles.csv . There are two notable periods that were accounted for:

• Hardware 1 production started (approximately) on  2014-10-01 but Autopilot was not enabled on that hardware until 2015-10-15. Source: Elon Musk tweet .
• Hardware 2+ production started (approximately) on 2016-10-19  but Autopilot was not enabled on that hardware until 2017-01-21. Source: Elon Musk tweet .

The data points on mileage (overall and in Autopilot) came from various sources online as listed in the Sources section below. It all boils down to an estimate of miles traveled per vehicle per day (overall and in Autopilot). This estimate has remained stable over time as the number of vehicles and miles increased:

• Average Tesla miles driven per vehicle per day:  31.76 miles/day
• Average Autopilot miles driven per Autopilot-enabled vehicle per day:  7.91 miles/day

This puts the percentage of miles that Autopilot operates an Autopilot-capable vehicle at 24.9% . This is very much a conservative estimate that falls 10+% lower than everything we’ve seen in ourMIT-AVT dataset, but much more details on that at a later time.

Key Estimated Numbers

As of June 19, 2018, the following are the rounded-down estimates of Autopilot related mileage traveled in Tesla vehicles to-date:

1. Total estimated Autopilot miles is over 1.2 billion .
2. Total miles in all Tesla vehicles is over 7.8 billion .
3. Total miles traveled in “shadow mode” is over 1.6 billion .

Updates

I’ll do my best to keep this blog post, visualizations, and mileage tracker updated as new information becomes available.

FAQ

Based on questions I received, here are some comments:

• Q: How did you make the animated plot? A: I wrote a wrapper around Matplotlib that allows for animation of time series data.
• Q:  Can I use the data, images, videos provided in this blog post?
  A: Yes, of course. Please mention where you got it from. For the images/videos, please don’t modify them in any way.
• Q: I have a Tesla, can I join your MIT study?
  A:  Sure. First, I’d appreciate it if you filled out this Tesla Autopilot survey . Second, to learn more about the data in the study seethis page. Third, to let us know you’re interested go to this page .

Takeaway

Tesla Autopilot has driven over 1.2 billion estimated miles. This is a remarkable accomplishment in the history of applied AI research, development, and deployment. My mission and the mission of the team of engineers around me is to develop AI systems that save human lives. Tesla is striving to do the same at a very large scale. How successful they are is yet to be seen. The stakes are high and the pressure on engineers to the best work of their life couldn’t be higher. We have a lot of data in theMIT-AVT studythat helps illuminate how to take on this life-critical challenge. More on this later. The fundamentals of human-robot interaction with Autopilot we’re observing are fascinating.

Sources

• Vehicle deliveries:  Tesla Vehicle Deliveries and Projections
• Autopilot usage rates:  MIT Autonomous Vehicle Technology Study
• Total mileage data points:
  • 2015-06-22 – 1 billion total – tesla website
  • 2016-04-08 – 2 billion total – tesla twitter
  • 2016-10-07 – 3 billion total – tesla twitter
  • 2016-12-26 – 3.5 billion – electrek
  • 2 018-04-22 – 7.2 billion – electrek
• Autopilot mileage data points:
  • 2016-04-09 – 47 million – tesla twitter
  • 2016-05-24 – 100 million – electrek
  • 2016-10-07 – 222 million – elon musk twitter