Tesla Acquires Startup DeepScale To Develop Real Driverless Cars

Tesla acquired Deepscale, a California-based startup, in its efforts to build a fleet of robotaxis by 2020.

Founded in 2015, Deepscale Inc. is known for Carver21, a perceptual systems software that enables vehicles to interpret the environment. DeepScale’s technology uses low-wattage processors that can power very accurate computer vision. These processors include sensors, mapping, planning, and control systems that will help the vehicle perceive what's going on in its environment.

With Tesla's acquisition, it could help fulfill Elon Musk's vision of autonomous ride-sharing.

Musk pointed out in April, during his company's Autonomy Day, that he envisions over a million robotaxis with a robotaxi network where Tesla owners can list their vehicles on a ride-sharing app, much like the business models of Uber and Airbnb.

The acquisition was confirmed by Forrest Iandola, CEO of Deepscale, on a post on his LinkedIn page Tuesday:

"I joined the Tesla #Autopilot team this week. I am looking forward to working with some of the brightest minds in #deeplearning and #autonomousdriving."

Iandola together with Kurt Keutzer co-founded the company out of a UC Berkeley research on improving the efficiency of deep neural nets (DNNs) for computer vision.

When Iandola finally joins Tesla, he will most likely work under Andrej Karpathy, head of AI and computer vision for Tesla. Joining Iandola are at least 10 DeepScale engineers and researches who switched their employer status to Tesla in just two days.

Tesla's vehicles are still not considered fully autonomous or level 4 as designated by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). Level 4 means that no human interaction is required in the "vast majority of the situations."

Instead, Tesla is considered level 2, which means that steering, acceleration, and deceleration can be performed by the vehicle but is unable to detect the environment. To jump to level 4, Deepscale's technology and synergy with the company's workforce and talent would be essential for Tesla.

Tesla has not yet confirmed the acquisition.

On Monday, Tesla posted strong third-quarter results with its Model 3 selling 3,300 units in Norway and over 7,000 units delivered to the Netherlands. The success of Tesla in Europe comes amid a struggling European car industry.