Tesla World Map Shows EV Hot Spots in Cities Across the Globe

Tesla could have a strong advantage in the race to deliver full autonomous driving: a global fleet of camera-equipped vehicles. At the company’s “autonomy investor day” at its Palo Alto headquarters on Monday, Tesla showed a map of its fleet that could be used to gather data and make its machines smarter.

“The thing that’s, I think, a very powerful, sustainable advantage for us is the fleet. Nobody has the fleet,” CEO Elon Musk said during the presentation. “Tesla has 100 times more cars with the full self-driving hardware than everyone else combined.”

That fleet of around 370,000 autonomy-ready cars has resulted in a globe-spanning selection of zero-emission vehicles, helping to transition the world onto sustainable energy.

The heat map of these cars show some clear population trends, like the United States’ concentration on the east coast:

… Or the blue banana of over 100 million people that covers western Europe:

Although it may seem coterminous with a population map, a pet peeve of XKCD’s Randall Munroe, there are some surprising pockets of Tesla usage.

Perhaps the densest area is Norway, the electric car hub that tipped into majority EV sales in the month of March due to the launch of the Model 3. Musk claims it has the highest number of Teslas on the road per person.

Another interesting flash is in Belarus and Russia. During the soccer World Cup last summer, fans plugged that giant gap in Tesla’s global supercharger network of 12,888 charge points, which pumps up to 250 kilowatts into vehicles to fill the battery in minutes. The makeshift charge points meant fans could travel the 310 miles between Moscow and the closest charge point in Belarus. The rest of Russia is largely dark though — autonomous car develop Cognitive Pilot previously told Inverse its system benefits from being specifically trained on these roads.

The map also shows high levels of usage in Asia. China’s coast is lit up, where the Model 3’s launch this year sparked traffic queues as buyers scrambled to register their ownership and get driving.

Taiwan’s roads around the edge of the island encircle its mountainous center. Flanked by South Korea and China on either side, North Korea notably stands out as a dark spot on the map. It seems Musk is probably not going to harvest much autonomous car data about the regime’s road system.

With Tesla aiming to have over one million robot taxis on the streets by 2020, this global network of data could prove vital.