What does "Beta Phase" mean?

electricAK

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In the Q2 earnings call on 7/26/2021, it was said that the Cybertruck was in/finished the Alpha phase, and Tesla will be entering Beta Phase of Cybertruck later this year. What does that mean?

Are these standard vehicle production terms that industry folks know and understand? Or are they just Tesla's way of being obscure and not telling us where they are at with production?

If the latter, I assume the Beta phase would include producing a few more cybertrucks to be used for crash testing, showing off, etc.

Sidenote: I was on the Rivian website yesterday, and saw that they had secretly taken a few Rivian trucks on some awesome cross-continent real world testing trips over the last year. Any chance Tesla is going to be doing this with CT in the Beta Phase?
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jhogan2424

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In the Q2 earnings call on 7/26/2021, it was said that the Cybertruck was in/finished the Alpha phase, and Tesla will be entering Beta Phase of Cybertruck later this year. What does that mean?

Are these standard vehicle production terms that industry folks know and understand? Or are they just Tesla's way of being obscure and not telling us where they are at with production?

If the latter, I assume the Beta phase would include producing a few more cybertrucks to be used for crash testing, showing off, etc.

Sidenote: I was on the Rivian website yesterday, and saw that they had secretly taken a few Rivian trucks on some awesome cross-continent real world testing trips over the last year. Any chance Tesla is going to be doing this with CT in the Beta Phase?
I was wondering exactly the same thing myself.
 

LDRHAWKE

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Beta Phase

Rivian

it was a real life adventure series called LONG WAY UP. Number three on Ewan McGregor‘s motorcycle adventures series. An AppleTV Series staring “Star-wars” Ewan McGregor. Great watch if you are a motorcycle long distance rider. Very educational about the World we live in
highly recommend. Ewan and his buddies rode Harley Davidson first venture into electric motorcycles from the southern tip of South America to LA. Their support. vehicles were Rivian trucks. After watching it I had second thoughts about owning any electric vehicle
.probably why it isn’t in any Rivian or Harley sales brochure.

https://www.longwayround.com/
 
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Friday

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Beta testing (in my world) is when a "new thing" is installed at very select customers to begin to integrate into their processes. It's a painful time due to finding, chasing, fixing, altering found bugs. High escalation time to smooth the edges.

Tesla's beta might be having select users put it through real world paces somewhere, but how it wouldn't get noticed is hard to believe.
 

akcoyote

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I think many of us (myself included) are wondering what Tesla means by the use of those obscure terms.

The following is pure speculation without any supporting evidence:
I think their "Alpha" phase is figuring out procedures, parts, and equipment needed to make CTs at scale. And "Beta" would be testing and refining what was determined in the "Alpha" phase. If correct, the "Beta" phase might see a few production version prototypes built for crash and durability testing.
 


Friday

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Ewan and his buddies rode Harley Davidson first venture into electric motorcycles from the southern tip of South America to LA. Their support. vehicles we’re Rivian trucks. After watching it I had second thoughts about owning any electric vehicle
.probably why it isn’t in any Rivian or Harley sales brochure.

not Harley's anymore
 

Ogre

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I think many of us (myself included) are wondering what Tesla means by the use of those obscure terms.
They are not obscure terms.

Maybe not known much outside of the tech industry, but they are fairly well known.

One of the things which is very much different about Tesla is they do a lot of this stuff in the public eye. Where is Ford in this process? It’s an industry secret. GM with the Hummer? Likewise, close kept secret.

What kind of battery does Rivian use in their truck? What caused the delay from June to September? We really don’t know. Aside from a few carefully groomed info-bites sent to their customers, it’s a black box.

People bitch about Tesla’s delays and lack of information, but the level of details they’ve released is way beyond what anyone else has put out about their products. The deeper Tesla goes into showing us how the sausage is made, the more we need to know about sausage making to understand what they say.
 

Bill906

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I‘ve always understood Alpha testing to be tests performed on software, firmware or physical product that is done by the creator/developer. Think “in house” testing. Beta testing is when the product is tested by a user, consumer or possibly third party. For example FSD on city streets was tested by internal Tesla people (alpha test) then moved to Beta testing where a select group of consumers were given a prerelease version to test. FSD on city streets is currently in beta test. This is how I understand the terms but I’m not sure this is what is meant with the CT.
 
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electricAK

electricAK

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I‘ve always understood Alpha testing to be tests performed on software, firmware or physical product that is done by the creator/developer. Think “in house” testing. Beta testing is when the product is tested by a user, consumer or possibly third party. For example FSD on city streets was tested by internal Tesla people (alpha test) then moved to Beta testing where a select group of consumers were given a prerelease version to test. FSD on city streets is currently in beta test. This is how I understand the terms but I’m not sure this is what is meant with the CT.
Yeah, it just sounds different the way they stated it. Maybe they did mean Beta testing. Or maybe they just meant: Stage 2.

If we have to wait another 6 months for CT's to start making it out into the wild, It sure would be great to see some Beta testing happening in the real world, a la Rivian. I know there is/was a CT at Tesla's test facility in Alaska, but, it's summer here. They're clearly not doing winter testing right now. So, what ARE they doing?
 

jhogan2424

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I‘ve always understood Alpha testing to be tests performed on software, firmware or physical product that is done by the creator/developer. Think “in house” testing. Beta testing is when the product is tested by a user, consumer or possibly third party. For example FSD on city streets was tested by internal Tesla people (alpha test) then moved to Beta testing where a select group of consumers were given a prerelease version to test. FSD on city streets is currently in beta test. This is how I understand the terms but I’m not sure this is what is meant with the CT.
That’s the way I understand the term too. Beta testing seems to be a way for persons without any inside bias to give their own opinions and thoughts on the product so potential problem areas and bugs can be identified by someone that doesn’t have tunnel vision from working on the product. You can bet the farm if this is the case that the few lucky folks will be signing an airtight NDA and there won’t be any videos splattered all over youtube for us to watch. Might accidentally catch a pic at a stoplight though!
 
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BillyGee

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That’s the way I understand the term too. Beta testing seems to be a way for persons without any inside bias to give their own opinions and thoughts on the product so potential problem areas and bugs can be identified by someone that doesn’t have tunnel vision from working on the product. You can bet the farm if this is the case that the few lucky folks will be signing an airtight NDA and there won’t be any videos splattered all over youtube for us to watch. Might accidentally catch a pic at a stoplight though!
Knowing Tesla though, that might be what they mean by "friends and family" phase, where they have people from other departments and SpaceX drive the vehicles for a bit.
 

jhogan2424

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Knowing Tesla though, that might be what they mean by "friends and family" phase, where they have people from other departments and SpaceX drive the vehicles for a bit.
Very good point. Definitely can’t discount that.
 

braddibbnd

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Tesla more than any other vehicle manufacturer is a software entity that writes its own software for each vehicle. There may be a base code that each vehicle uses, but I would be very surprised if a M3 had the exact same software as a Plaid MS. So with such a completely different vehicle(suspension, towing/hauling variables, off roading) than the S3XY lineup, there will be a lot of code that will only pertain to CT. So when they use terms like alpha and beta, some of it comes from a software developer viewpoint.
That said, there is still a lot of hardware/manufacturing/design changes and tweaks that also have to be made before the general public gets to play with their CT. Can't wait to get my CT and see all that it can do but am also a bit relieved that I won't be one of the first 10-20,000 owners. I would guess that there will be a few bugs and improvements before my reservation gets called. And updates to Tesla software has dropped off from the pace in 2019-2020, but so many online posters were giddy with the updates saying that it was like Christmas on each new release. With the FSD, Plaid S, Cybertruck and Semi, I think the software people have had their hands full.
 

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Beta Phase is a new one on me. If they meant beta testing that wouldn’t make sense either. Perhaps Beta Phase is a manufacturing term as someone guessed. As much as it might make sense that doesn’t mean it is correct. I suppose we will have to wait and see like everything else.
 

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They are not obscure terms.

Maybe not known much outside of the tech industry, but they are fairly well known.
Okay, so what is it?
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