Tesla Autopilot

Active safety features are becoming increasingly popular as automakers are trying to leverage their development of autonomous driving into automated driver assist features.

Tesla’s Autopilot has been regarded as a leader in the space and now Edmunds releases evidence of that in a new report.
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Well, that was quick. Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla is adding automatic emergency braking to ‘Autopilot 2.5’ cars with a new update, but it was capped to 50 mph.

Tesla now started releasing a new software update to enable full speed automatic emergency braking for Autopilot 2.5 cars – along with other improvements.
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Tesla has been working on Autopilot 2.0 software for a year now almost to the day and some owners think that they have not shown enough progress. That’s why it wasn’t surprising to see the first question during a recent Q&A session with Tesla’s President of Sales and Service, Jon McNeill, being about Autopilot 2.0.

In his response, the executive cautiously addressed an upcoming update which he tested himself.
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As we previously reported, Tesla’s recently introduced a new Autopilot hardware suite, dubbed “2.5”, in all its vehicles to enable more power and redundancy for its future self-driving capability.

The new hardware has been under a ‘calibration period’, which resulted in those vehicles not having ‘automatic emergency braking’. Now we learn that Tesla started gradually rolling out the safety feature.
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A year ago, Tesla launched its second generation Autopilot hardware (Autopilot 2.0) and announced the ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ and ‘Fully Self-Driving Capability’ packages.

At this point, it’s no secret that Tesla has been late to release software updates for the features promised under those new Autopilot packages. Nonetheless, new data obtained by Electrek shows that an impressive number of Tesla owners have been buying the options.
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Nvidia is currently an important supplier for Tesla considering it powers everything from its infotainment system to its Autopilot computer.

After signs that Tesla is moving away from the chipmaker for its Autopilot system, now a report suggests Tesla is also looking elsewhere for its infotainment system.
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As expected yesterday following a report, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is partly blaming Tesla’s Autopilot system for the fatal, May 7, 2016, crash of a Tesla near Williston, Florida.

They determined that the Autopilot’s “operational limitations played a role” in the crash even though it “functioned as designed”, according to the board.

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Tomorrow, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plans to release its report to “determine the probable cause of the fatal, May 7, 2016, crash of a Tesla near Williston, Florida”.

Ahead of the release, Bloomberg reported that that the board concluded that Tesla’s Autopilot “shares blame” for the accident that cost the life of the driver, Joshua Brown.

But the company argues against the publication’s interpretation.
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Tesla’s recently introduced new Autopilot hardware suite, dubbed “2.5”, in all its vehicles to enable more power and redundancy for its future self-driving capability.

Now Tesla warned the new owners of those vehicles being delivered that a ‘calibration period’ for the new hardware is resulting in features operating in “shadow mode”.
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Tesla’s vehicles are now all equipped with 8 cameras to power its Autopilot features and for a while now, some owners have been asking for the possibility to also use them as a dashcam.

CEO Elon Musk now says that the feature is “coming soon”.
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Earlier this month, Tesla pushed a new over-the-air software update for Autopilot 2.0 vehicles and while the only official new feature was Automatic High Beam being enabled worldwide, it also included “improvements” to the main Autopilot features.

Some owners are now reporting the perceived changes with the latest update.
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The Wall Street Journal came out today with a report (paywall) painting a dire picture of Tesla’s Autopilot program.

The publication claims that CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious goals for the program have led to some employees resignations and doubts about the company’s ability to deliver on those goals.
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Tesla started pushing its latest over-the-air Autopilot software update ‘2017.32’ for cars equipped with the second generation hardware last night. 
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Tesla has been equipping all its vehicles produced since October 2016 with a “supercomputer” as part of its Autopilot 2.0 hardware to run its deep learning neural net computer vision technology, which the company believes will eventually enable fully self-driving capability through future software updates.

While it is likely the most powerful computer in a production car today, some had doubts about it being powerful enough or have enough redundancy to truly enable level 5 autonomous driving. Tesla CEO Elon Musk even said that they could eventually upgrade the system if it can’t achieve full autonomy.

That was less than a year ago and we now learn that the automaker is already shipping a new Autopilot hardware suite with a more powerful version of its onboard computer.
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Just a few days before the launch of the Model 3, Tesla has slipped an interesting update into the onboard instruction manuals of Model S and Model X.

After the most recent software update, the new gear selector seen on Model 3 prototypes is now part of the manuals.
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Last month, Tesla started the rollout of a new Autopilot 2.0 with a new control algorithm that CEO Elon Musk described as a “smooth as silk”.

While it had some noticeable improvements, like with the Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC), some owners were let down by the update, especially after Musk called it “smooth as silk”.

But a few week later, Tesla is now releasing a new version of the update and this one is better deserving of the hype created by Musk’s comment.
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Yesterday, we reported on an accident in Minnesota that resulted in a Tesla Model S rolling over off road and ending up upside down in a marsh.

After the accident, the driver, David Clark, blamed Tesla’s Autopilot, according to the local sheriff’s department.

Clark now recants his view of the accident after cooling down and having talked to his passengers.
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Update: Tesla driver recants blame on Autopilot in Minnesota accident, says he deactivated it before the crash

A Tesla Model S was involved in an accident in central Minnesota today which resulted in the vehicle rolling over and into a marsh.

The local sheriff’s department says that the driver and 4 passengers suffered “minor injuries”.

The driver, 58-year-old David Clark of Eden Prairie, told the police that Tesla Autopilot was to blame for the accident.
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Tesla’s vehicles are unique in a lot of ways – including the fact that as of October 2016, every new Tesla vehicle coming off the production line is equipped with what is basically a “supercomputer”.

Now the company’s new director of artificial intelligence compared the fleet to “a large, distributed, mobile data center.”
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While the wide over-the-air rollout of Tesla’s latest Autopilot 2.0 update, which was planned for last weekend, has been delayed, some owners were still able to get it and test it on the road.

We get a look at what CEO Elon Musk described as a “smooth as silk” control algorithm.
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After several changes in the Autopilot team’s leadership over the past few months, Tesla ended up hiring one of the leading AI and computer vision researchers this week.

At the same time however, we learn that several of the team’s top computer vision experts have left the company over the past few weeks.
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