65 Comments A hacker has revealed that Tesla has launched a new data gathering around the site where it plans to unveil its Robotaxi next month. It is raising questions about what the automaker is going to demonstrate at the event. While most other self-driving ride services, like Waymo and Cruise, focus on making their system work in geo-fenced city areas using mapping, Tesla has always claimed to differentiate itself by having a broader approach that involves developing a self-driving system closer to how human drives – meaning that it could virtually drive wherever without pre-mapping the area or even having an internet connection. Tesla aims to develop a system that can drive like humans, replacing eyes and brains with cameras and neural nets. The automaker is not quite there despite its CEO, Elon Musk, claiming that Tesla would achieve this by the end of every year since 2018. Tesla first unveiled its plans for a self-driving system with a video demonstration back in 2016. The video has since become really controversial because it was produced by using a predetermined route that was 3D mapped ahead of time. Tesla also ran that route several times to optimize the performance. In testimony as part of a lawsuit over this situation, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, confirmed that it wasn’t representative of the capabilities of Tesla’s system at the time: “The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system.” This led many people to claim that the video was “faked” or “staged.” Eight years later, Tesla is now preparing to hold a similar launch, but this time is for its “Robotaxi”, a dedicated self-driving vehicle platform for autonomous ridesharing.