The Autopilot is Tesla’s advanced assisted driving program with features like Autosteer, Autopark, and Trafic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC).
The hardware suite was first introduced in Tesla’s vehicles in September 2014. The company gradually released more and more advanced features through over-the-air software updates until the first meaningful “Autopilot Update” in October 2015 with the release of v.7.0 of Tesla OS.
In order to circumvent the regulations imposed by NHTSA on his aftermarket driver assist device, the ‘comma one’, George ‘geohot’ Hotz announced that his startup is releasing a new version of the product, ‘comma neo’ (an anagram for one), for free as an open-source platform.
Hotz, who describes the capabilities of the system as only matched by Tesla’s Autopilot, says that NHTSA’s regulations only apply to products for sales and that way, comma.ai can still get its product out there and now focus on what was described as a “pivot” to helping other companies develop autonomous driving systems and get more data for fleet-learning to improve its own platform.
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If you take delivery of a Tesla Model S or X today with the automaker’s brand-new “self-driving-ready hardware”, it actually can’t drive itself just yet since Tesla is still working on the software, but it also doesn’t even have driver assist features on par with Tesla’s first generation of Autopilot.
That’s because Tesla is working on the new generation using its own ‘Tesla Vision’ image processing architecture, the company is rebuilding the features based on the new systems. New owners are quite impatient to try the new promised features of Tesla’s ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ and CEO Elon Musk has now clarified the expected rollout of those features.
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We reported earlier this year about the MIT launching a new study on driver interaction with Tesla Autopilot features. Lex Fridman, the postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Agelab responsible for the study, is presenting it as a way to provide big data to prove that advanced driver assist features, like the ones offered by the Tesla Autopilot, are safer than driving without them.
Fridman presented the ongoing study in more details during TMC Connect earlier this summer and the Tesla Motors Club released this weekend the presentation in full (embedded below). It’s worth a watch.
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Yesterday, Tesla released two very interesting videos of the latest version of its self-driving technology on the new Autopilot 2.0 hardware. While they are fascinating to watch, they were both sped up. I think it’s worth revisiting the test with the video slowed down to real-time in order to really appreciate the level of autonomy Tesla achieved so far.
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Back in September, Tesla pushed the v8.0 software update to its fleet of vehicles and it enabled some significant updates to the vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. A series of new tests show that the pedestrian detection under v8.0 is significantly better and now Tesla even renders humans in front of the car on the instrument cluster.
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As new vehicles are coming off the assembly in Fremont right now, Tesla is making the transition from its first generation Autopilot hardware to its second generation hardware in order to gradually enable level 3 and 4 autonomous driving, and eventually fully self-driving capability, according to the automaker.
As we discussed in the past, the industry is skeptical of Tesla’s ability to deliver a fully self-driving level 5 system with its new hardware suite, but there’s a reason Tesla is confident in its ability to deliver such a system. The reason is data.
Electrek has learned that Tesla has now accumulated 1.3 billion miles of Autopilot data from its first generation sensor suite and “nearly all of it” is useful to the second generation Autopilot, according to the company.
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Tesla is on the counter-offensive in Germany. After modifying its price structure to get access to the EV incentives in the country, now Tesla is responding to the critiques of the German road authorities about Tesla’s use of the word ‘Autopilot’ to describe its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS).
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Update: Another source at Tesla says that the new Inifibox is not for the Autopilot program, but another source says that the new Autopilot is increasing Tesla’s need for data storage
Tesla’s next generation Autopilot/self-driving hardware suite has a lot more sensors gathering data than its previous generation. And with now ~25,000 new vehicles per quarter contributing to its growing fleet and gathering even more data, the company needs a solid data storage infrastructure to support its fleet learning capability.
In an effort to do just that, Electrek has learned that Tesla recently invested in a new state-of-the-art data storage system to support its new Autopilot program and the significant amount data expected to be collected through it.
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Tesla Model S and X vehicles with the new Autopilot and self-driving capable hardware, also known as ‘Hardware 2’ or ‘HW2’, are starting to roll off the assembly line in Fremont since Tesla’s announcement last month. Now vehicles are being spotted with the new hardware suite in the wild.
Consequently, it gives us our first look at the new sensors outside of Tesla’s press content.
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There seems to be some confusion over the timeline of the rollout of the new ‘Enhanced Autopilot capabilities’ (Level 3/4) and ‘Fully Self-Driving’ (Level 5) capability of Tesla’s new hardware suite. I tried to gather everything we know into one post in order to get a clear picture of what the company is guiding in term of software updates on the new hardware suite.
Tesla believes that it figured out the hardware necessary to enable fully self-driving cars and that the technology is now a software problem. Therefore, the automaker is now pushing to solve the problem and doing so with the most aggressive timeline in the industry:
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While Tesla’s announcement yesterday has a ton of incredibly interesting implications for the near future of the company and whole industries really, and we will get into those today or by the end of the week, let’s start by looking into the “product update” itself which is the addition of new hardware in all of the new Teslas rolling off the line in Fremont as of earlier this week.
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When announcing Tesla’s new Autopilot hardware suite that will soon allow all Tesla vehicles to become fully autonomous, CEO Elon Musk went on an epic rant scolding the media about the coverage of Autopilot crashes.
It’s not the first time that Musk voiced is disappointment with the media about the international coverage that the few Autopilot crashes have received, but Musk went a step further this time.
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Tesla is really feeling the pressure on Autopilot from Germany. After the local media reported on excerpts of an alleged evaluation of the Tesla Autopilot by Germany’s Transport Ministry, which depicted a harsh critique of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) calling it a “significant traffic hazard”, the ministry sent a letter to all Tesla owners in the country last week to give them instructions on how to use the system.
Now we learn that the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) is going one step further and it is now asking Tesla not to use the word ‘Autopilot’ when referring to its ADAS.
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Last week, we reported on excerpts of an alleged evaluation of the Tesla Autopilot by the Federal Highway Research Institute of Germany’s Transport Ministry. The excerpts showed a harsh critique of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) calling it a “significant traffic hazard”.
It created a lot of headlines in Germany where some publications reported that the Transport Minister could call for a ban on the Autopilot feature on German roads, but today we learn that the report resulted in a simple yet unusual letter to Tesla owners in Germany.
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Tesla is using its fleet of vehicles owned by its customers to collect data through its Autopilot sensors and build high-precision maps and other features to improve its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). With its latest OS update, version 8.0, the option to share the data with Tesla is automatically turned off for owners in Europe, presumably due to local privacy laws.
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Speculation has been running wild since Elon Musk hyped an “unexpected” upcoming product unveiling set for Monday, October 17. Details are scarce and no one at Tesla wants to confirm what will be part of the event next week.
Since you guys got it exactly right the last time with a strong majority, we thought it would be appropriate to come to you again to crowdsource an educated guess on the upcoming product unveiling.
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It’s arguable, of course, but third-party tests have shown Tesla Autopilot outperforming other semi-autonomous or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) from Mercedes, Hyundai and Cadillac by a wide margin. That, and the fact that Tesla is gaining more real world data in its vehicles than anyone else would seem to indicate Tesla is a leader in the field, if not the leader.
Now we learn that Tesla could be about to significantly increase its lead with ‘Tesla Vision’. Electrek has learned more details about the new program, which is an end-to-end computer vision system built with NVIDIA’s CUDA, a parallel computing platform by the graphics processing unit (GPU) maker.
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Earlier today, the German magazine Der Spiegel published excerpts from a new internal report on the Tesla Autopilot by the Federal Highway Research Institute of Germany’s Transport Ministry. The excerpts show a harsh critique of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) and go as far as calling it a “erhebliche Verkehrsgefährdung”, which directly translates to a “significant traffic hazard”.
Interestingly, the main problem with the Ministry’s analysis appears to be that they are benchmarking the Autopilot as a self-driving system – something it is not. Tesla has now issued a thorough response to the report in an attempt to clear the air.
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The controversy over how to approach Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) continues as the California DMV is moving forward with a new regulation to ban the use of certain words in the promotion and advertising of the systems.
One of the words is ‘Autopilot’, which is exactly what Tesla has been calling its own ADAS since its announcement in October 2014.
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Several German media outlets are reporting this morning on an accident involving a Tesla Model S and a bus on the Autobahn in northern Germany. According to the reports, the Model S was changing lanes using the Autopilot feature and crashed into a bus.
The 50-year-old driver was reportedly “slightly injured” in the accident, but all passengers on the bus were unhurt.
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As promised by Elon Musk last week, Tesla started rolling out the update last night and now we get every single detail of what the automaker is describing as “the biggest update since the introduction of the Model S”.
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Tesla v8.0 software update with upgraded Autopilot features has started being pushed to owners last night. The update includes a lot of unanimously welcomed upgrades, like the new radar processing technology, voice command improvements, and upgraded navigation and media apps with the UI overhaul.
But it also includes new Autopilot ‘nags’ and restrictions, taking the form of alerts and warnings, which are dividing Tesla owners. Some see new restriction as Tesla rolling back features that they already bought and a few go as far as refusing to update, while others welcome the new restrictions as a way to make the system safer.
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The conversation around Tesla’s upcoming v8.0 software update has revolved around the improved Autopilot, and rightfully so with the new radar processing technology to be introduced with it. But for many the biggest change will be the entire UI overhaul.
Today we take our first exclusive look at the new UI ahead of the wide release of v8.0, which is expected to be pushed to Model S and X owners later this week, thanks to new pictures from an anonymous source.
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The saga of the breakup between Tesla and Mobileye just keeps getting messier. After the comments made by Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua claiming that Tesla was “pushing the envelope in terms of safety”, Tesla issued a scathing response alleging that Mobileye used some questionable methods to force Tesla to use their system for future generations of the Autopilot.
Today, Mobileye responded to the allegations, partly refuting them, and again reiterating that they initiated the end of the partnership because they disagreed with Tesla on their approach to safety with the Autopilot.
But the statement is surprisingly not trying to refute some of Tesla’s most serious allegations.
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