Benchmarking Profile of Tesla's Autonomous Driving Strategy, 2018

Tesla’s In-house Technological Innovations will Continue to Upend the Conventional Automotive Industry

Once in a while, a new market participant will emerge in an industry and disrupt its technological and business landscape entirely. In the automobile industry, the entry of Tesla created this dramatic shift and began to transform the sector. Tesla’s fully self-reliant business model has disrupted conventional ways of doing business, as traditional automakers have been relying heavily on third-party suppliers. As most of Tesla’s production and R&D for the autonomous, connectivity, and electrification sectors are conducted in-house, the company remains immune to price fluctuations exerted by Tier-I participants. This additionally, gives the company complete freedom to modify components and customize them as per internal requirements. For instance, Tesla is the only automaker to create its own processor chip. Traditional OEMs rely on the expertise of Tier-I and Tier-II market participants for development and integration; however, Tesla decided to replace NVIDIA’s GPU-based solution with their own chip, which is based on Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).

This benchmarking study assesses a list of Tesla’s current suppliers and partnerships to map the entire manufacturing ecosystem.

In this era of autonomous driving, with humans relinquishing control of the vehicle while driving, Tesla is making rapid inroads into the market with their autonomous technologies. The study analyzes various aspects of the development of hardware and software undertaken by Tesla to build autonomous vehicles and achieve full autonomy-such as its electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture and sensor suite strategy. Furthermore, the study also provides an in-depth coverage and a comparative analysis of the different generations of Autopilot systems by Tesla. It also lists the different autonomy packages offered by Tesla and its charts the company’s roadmap for releasing over-the-air (OTA) features and achieving L4 and L5 autonomy.

This research study covers the shifting dynamics towards ride-sharing models and Tesla’s participation in it. Tesla has plans in the pipeline for its ride-hailing service-Tesla Network-which will make use of Tesla vehicles exclusively.

In consideration of the technological evolution taking place in the automotive industry, the study additionally provides vehicle forecasts to assess addressable market opportunities alongside an analysis to gauge the company’s financial performance. This study also identifies some of the key technology trends and growth opportunities set to drive Tesla’s growth in the next five years.

Key Issues Addressed

• How is Tesla’s autonomous strategy different from other automakers in the industry?
• What has been Tesla’s step-by-step procedure in upgrading Autopilot hardware to achieve higher levels of autonomy?
• How is the AP 3.0, based on Tesla’s in-house built processor chip, expected to fare against NVIDIA-based AP 2.0 and 2.5?
• What is Tesla’s current sensor suite strategy and how will it change by 2025?
• What is Tesla’s PARC statistics and how does it change based on Autopilot generations?