Executive Officer, Tesla
Search every verified Ashok Elluswamy interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Ashok Elluswamy, Vice President of AI at Tesla, has described the company’s mission as “producing amazing abundance for the entire world” through autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. In early 2026, he stated that Tesla’s robotaxi service is operating in Austin, Texas, with no safety driver, and that the company aims to scale the service to the entire fleet. Elluswamy said that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system is an end-to-end neural network that uses only cameras and no radar, lidar, or HD maps, and that the same foundational model is being adapted for the Optimus humanoid robot. He predicted that by 2035 all cars manufactured will be self-driving and that humanoid robots will be able to interact in natural language. Elluswamy has emphasized that Tesla’s approach relies on large-scale data and compute, including the custom Dojo training hardware, to achieve safety and smooth driving. He stated that the company’s end-to-end system can be probed for reasoning traces and 3D understanding, and that it has enabled features such as emergency braking for crossing vehicles. Elluswamy described Tesla as “all in on robotics” and said the company is focused on producing intelligent robots for physical work, with the goal of creating a car that “doesn’t need to crash ever.”
“The mission of Tesla is amazing abundance and we want to have this happen through the creation of general purpose robots. What we mean by that is creating robots that can operate autonomously in a wide range of embodiment.”
“When you drive on FSD you are 2x safer than driving on manual even with active safety that protects the reason why this is possible because FSD proactively does the right thing like humans are you know if you look at the long tail of humans they are less dangerous drivers they do horrible things for no good reason mayb...”
“The vehicles are like a low-cost, scalable solution to transport and humanoid robots are a low-cost, scalable solution to automate like all physical work.”
“This will have the lowest cost of transportation, even beating public transport, while delivering a premium point-to-point transportation experience for everyone.”
“We want to scale the service to be much, much better and unlock the entire fleet of Tesla vehicles to be fully autonomous. This is the Cyber Cab, our next‑gen vehicle designed as a robot taxi and it's going to have the lowest cost of transportation across even public transportation.”
“Every Tesla that's manufactured in the US also delivers itself from the manufacturing line all the way to the loading docks, which is a couple miles away.”
“By 2035 all cars manufactured will be self-driving.”
“There are already driverless services in the US like Whimo, which is already safer than human driving.”
“I think Tesla is the first company to ship this emergency braking for crossing vehicles, to the best of my knowledge.”
“Dojo is our training hardware that we have custom built at Tesla that is starting production next month, and with that we think we are on the way to become one of the top compute platforms in the entire world.”
“There are no usage of radar, lidar, ultrasonics or other sensors in the making of this — in fact we don't even use HD maps; all of this is based on the live camera video stream.”
“If we do all of these steps correctly we can produce a car that doesn't need to crash ever.”
“What we want to show today is that Tesla is much more than an electric car company — that we have deep AI activity in hardware, on the inference level, on the training level.”
“I think arguably we are the leaders in real-world AI as it applies to the real world, and those of you who have seen the full self-driving beta can appreciate the rate at which the Tesla neural net is learning to drive.”
At the CVPR 2026 WDFM-EAI Workshop (https://wdfm-eai.github.io/CVPR26/) in Denver, Ashok Elluswamy (VP - Tesla), delivered a keynote titled “Building Foundational Models for Robotics at Tesla"
Ashok Elluswamy, head of the Tesla AI team, presents at Scaled ML 2026 Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction and Tesla AI Team Mission 0:20 - Tesla’s Mission: Producing Abundance 0:32 - Robotaxi Service in Austin, Driven by Cameras and AI 1:20 - Humanoid Robots and Automating Physical Work 2:05 - Full Self-Driving (FSD) Deployment and Safety 2:38 - FSD vs. Manual Driving Safety Metrics 3:30 - How the Software Works and Challenges 3:42 - End-to-End Driving System vs. Modular Approaches 4:34 - Why End-to-End Systems are Better for Robotics 5:17 - Example: Solving the Trolley Problem with a Pu…
👉 Checkout our blog for the highlights of the talk: / a-peek-into-teslas-autonomous-future-core-... At the ICCV 2025 WDFM-AD Workshop (https://wdfm-ad.github.io/iccv25/) in Honolulu, Ashok Elluswamy, VP of AI at Tesla, delivered a keynote titled “Building an Autonomous Future.” For the first time, Tesla offered a structured, technical breakdown of its end-to-end foundation model stack—the AI backbone powering Full Self-Driving (FSD) and the Robotaxi.
Enquiries: [email protected] Stay ahead with direct updates from Gobinath — interviews, insights, and powerful voices. Join the official WhatsApp Channel today: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb5g... #Gobinath #ashokelluswamy #tesla #elonmusk #ai #artificialintelligence #ev #evcars #roboticsengineering #podcast #agi #artificialgeneralintelligence #humanoidrobot #humanintelligence #adas #quantumcomputer #software #hardware In this groundbreaking episode, Gobinath sits down with Ashok Elluswamy, Vice President of AI Software at Tesla, for his first-ever in-depth interview. A proud Ta…
Talk given at the CVPR Workshop on Autonomous Driving 2023: https://cvpr2023.wad.vision/. 00:00 Introduction 02:09 Occupancy Networks Recap 04:04 Generative Modeling of Lanes 06:15 Object Prediction & Properties 08:10 Fleet Auto-Labeling 13:23 Learning a General World Model 18:04 Large Compute 20:02 Q&A
We plan to host Tesla's 2023 Investor Day on March 1, 2023. Our investors will be able to see our most advanced production line ...
Join us to build the future of AI → https://www.tesla.com/ai -------- 0:00:00 - Pre-show 0:13:56 - Tesla Bot Demo 0:29:15 - Tesla Bot ...
Talk given at the Workshop on Autonomous Driving at CVPR 2022. 2022-06-20.
Join us to build the future of AI → https://www.tesla.com/ai 0:00 - Pre-event 46:54 - AI Day Begins 48:44 - Tesla Vision 1:13:12 - Planning and Control 1:24:35 - Manual Labeling 1:28:11 - Auto Labeling 1:35:15 - Simulation 1:42:10 - Hardware Integration 1:45:40 - Dojo 2:05:14 - Tesla Bot 2:12:59 - Q&A
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