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.
This is part 3 of our transcript of Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update. You can read the part 1 and part 2 for Musk’s opening statement and part 3 is the first part of the Q&A:
Tim Stevens – Roadshow
Hi Elon, you mentioned the radar working well with signs and thing like that but mentioned perhaps something big and fluffy might be a challenge. Can you give me an idea of what that means for something like a moose, a deer or horses?
Elon Musk – Tesla CEO
Yeah it’s a good question. Actually, it should work for something like moose- because something like a moose is quite a big mass, but it may not work for say a small deer. A small deer probably would not trigger braking, but a moose I think would. I’m not 100% sure of that, but I think it would trigger on a moose.
We got a lot of customers in Canada and other places where there are moose-size creatures so I think we will get good information on that and obviously, you definitely want to brake for a moose because they are very big and it can cause a lot of harms.
I think it will (stop for a moose), but if not, I’m confident we can tune it to do so.
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This is part 2 of our transcript of Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update. You can read the part 1 here: Transcript: Elon Musk’s press conference about Tesla Autopilot under v8.0 update [Part 1]
Elon Musk – Tesla CEO:
Radar sees through rain, fog, snow, dust, and essentially quite easily. So even if you are driving down the road and the visibility was very low and there was a big multi-car pileup or something like that and you cant’ see it, the radar would and it would initiate braking in time to avoid your car being added to the multi-car pileup.
In fact, an additional level of sophistication – we are confident that we can use the radar to look beyond the car in front of you by bouncing the radar signal off the road and around the car. We are able to process that echo by using the unique signature of each radar pulse as well as the time of flight of the photon to determine that what we are seeing is in fact an echo in front of the car that’s in front of you. So even if there’s something that was obscured directly both in vision and radar, we can use the bounce effect of the radar to look in front of that car and still brake.
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Today, Elon Musk apologized for the delay in releasing his blog post about the updated Autopilot under v8.0 citing “unusually difficult couple of weeks”, presumably due to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 anomaly on September 1, but now he sets the date for tomorrow afternoon:
Will do some press Q&A on Autopilot post at 11am PDT tmrw and then publish at noon. Sorry about delay. Unusually difficult couple of weeks.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2016
The fact that he is holding a press conference before the release of the blog post is a good sign of the importance of the information that will be released.
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A Tesla Model S with manufacturer plates was spotted near Tesla’s Palo Alto headquarters yesterday. The vehicle had additional sensors mounted on the roof which is spurring speculation.
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While news outlets are quick to jump on the opportunity to report on accidents involving Tesla’s Autopilot system, the Autopilot helping prevent accidents is actually a more common occurrence and it doesn’t get nearly as much attention.
Of course, there’s no wreckage to grab the eye and therefore, it rarely reaches the media’s standard of sensationalism, but it helps when it is caught on a dashcam. After a near miss on the highway today in California, a Tesla Model S owner credited the Autopilot in helping avoid an accident.
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As we are still waiting for Elon Musk’s blog post about the updated capacity of the Autopilot with the upcoming v8.0 and v8.1 updates, we can get a glimpse of what the future generation of the Autopilot (not just software, but with hardware updates) will be able to do.
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The tragic death of 45-year-old Joshua Brown might go down in history as one of the most widely reported car accidents. And it’s not over. Brown died on May 7, 2016 in Florida, when his Tesla Model S on Autopilot went under the trailer of an 18-wheel semi and the roof of his car was torn off by the impact.
Following the crash, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a preliminary evaluation in Tesla’s Autopilot system. As part of the evaluation, NHTSA requested a lot of information from Tesla, which the company had to submit by August 26.
The deadline has passed, but NHTSA reportedly gave Tesla an extension.
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After the recent and widely covered series of Tesla accidents while on Autopilot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked about focusing on better educating Tesla owners on how to use Autopilot features. Last month, he mentioned an upcoming blog post to highlight “how Autopilot works as a safety system and what drivers are expected to do after they activate it.”
We have yet to see that blog post, but now Electrek has learned that Tesla will introduce new Autopilot safety restrictions in order to reduce the risk of similar accidents happening again. Tesla owners are often wary of new Autopilot restrictions. They feel like Tesla is rolling back features that they have paid for, but they shouldn’t worry about the new restrictions since they will not really affect owners using the system properly.
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Yesterday, the same day Tesla announced its new 100 kWh battery pack for the new Model S and Model X P100D, Tesla also quietly increased the price of the Autopilot by $500. The news comes just two weeks after we reported that Tesla is working on new Autopilot sensors.
The price increase would seem to hint at Tesla introducing the new sensors in the vehicle right now, but the company claims otherwise.
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Aside from the tragic fatal accident in a Tesla Model S on Autopilot in May, almost every driver involved and the subsequent accidents on Autopilot admitted that they were not paying attention or were not ready to take over control at the time of the crash when using Tesla’s advanced driver assist features.
The driver in the recent fender-bender in China admitted that he was looking at his phone during the crash and now we learn of another accident, which happened in Texas earlier this month, and the driver says that he reached into his glovebox and was cleaning his dash during the crash.
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Since publishing our piece on the Autopilot 2.0 last week, there has been a lot of discussion about the possible availability of a retrofit for the new suite of sensors on the current Model S and Model X. A retrofit is indeed likely at some level, but not for all Tesla owners.
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Following a fender bender in a Tesla Model S on Autopilot in China last month and the driver’s allegation that Tesla told him the vehicle was “self-driving”, which was supported by Tesla using the words “zidong jiashi”, which translates to “self-driving”, on its Chinese website, Tesla has now removed any mention of the words and staff are reportedly undergoing more training to make sure they understand that Autopilot is not self-driving and drivers need to keep their hands on the wheel.
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Tesla introduced the first Autopilot hardware suite, a front-facing camera, a front-facing radar, and 360° ultrasonic sensor in September 2014. A year later, in October 2015, Tesla released the first ‘Autopilot update’ (v7.0) to introduce features like Autosteer and Autopark. While the automaker was able to significantly improve the software and release new features on the same hardware, the sensor suite still offers its limitations
Enter Autopilot 2.0. The next generation Autopilot will feature new hardware on which Tesla will incrementally push new features through over-the-air software updates. The new sensor suite will enable level 3 autonomous driving and potentially level 4 fully autonomous driving in a not too distant future.
We now have some concrete information on Tesla’s second generation Autopilot hardware and it is coming sooner than you might think…
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Last week, we reported on an accident in China involving a Tesla Model S hitting a car stuck on the side of the road while the Tesla was on Autopilot. The accident was caught on the driver’s dashcam and it showed a long delay during which the Tesla driver, Luo Zhen, could have taken control of the vehicle.
Luo has since admitted that he wasn’t paying attention and looking at his phone, but he says that he had a good reason to since he claims Tesla employees led him to believe he was buying a “self-driving car”.
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The convenience features of Tesla’s Autopilot, like Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, are meant to reduce the driver’s workload and make driving a Tesla more convenient, and according to a Model X driver in Missouri, it can also help you survive a medical emergency when you are on the road.
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You might remember when we reported on a Tesla Model S driver in Switzerland publishing a video of his car crashing into a van after the vehicle Tesla’s Autopilot was following swerve halfway off his lane to pass a van on the side of the road.
Now a very similar accident happened in China and the Model S driver also caught the fender bender on his dashcam.
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During a conference call today, Elon Musk talked about Tesla’s progress in level 4 fully autonomous driving and while he didn’t want to make an announcement on the call, he said that it is coming sooner than people think:
“What we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind …it’ll come sooner than people think.”
Musk’s most recent prediction placed the technology being ready in Q4 2017, around the time Model 3 will enter production.
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When we reported on the European Public Road Authority supporting Tesla’s Autopilot system following some concerns over the use of the word ‘Autopilot’ and the program being in ‘beta’ earlier this month, we also mentioned that a bigger concern could be Mercedes calling its E-Class with ‘Drive-Pilot’ a ‘self-driving car’ in an advert, which is significantly more misleading than Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’.
Now we learn that the automaker is pulling the ad following Consumer Reports complaint to the FTC.
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Tesla is undoubtedly pushing its Autopilot program quickly, but the company says that its focus is safety. CEO Elon Musk is on record saying that he sees the current version of the program as safer than a human driving without all of Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver assist features – adding that not releasing the system is “killing people with statistics”.
Yet, some Tesla Autopilot engineers are reportedly uncomfortable with the pace of the deployment of the program, according to a new report from CNN.
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The news that Tesla and Mobileye are parting ways over the development of the Autopilot program was surprising for some yesterday, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk has since commented on the news calling it “inevitable”.
Now Tesla’s Autopilot Program Director, Sterling Anderson, is adding some color to the change of direction, saying that Tesla is looking to move quickly in autonomous driving and in order to do that, they need a “tight integration” of both hardware and software. Something they can do better if more of the program is developed in-house.
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We reported this morning that Mobileye confirmed that it will end its partnership with Tesla for the development of the Autopilot program. The company’s EyeQ3 chip, which is currently in Tesla’s vehicles, will still be supported but the company will move away from the system in future iterations of the Autopilot.
Now Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on the move saying that “it will not have any material effect on [Tesla’s] plans” and that the company will focus on a more integrated system.
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The National Transportation Safety Board Office of Public Affairs (NTSB) released its preliminary report following the start of its investigation of the fatal May 7, 2016, highway crash involving a Tesla Model S on Autopilot and a semitrailer.
The preliminary report doesn’t contain much information or any analysis of the accident, but it did confirm for the first time the speed of the Tesla. According to the NTSB, the Model S was driving at 74 mph while the speed limit was 65 mph.
In a conference call discussing its second quarter financial results today, Mobileye confirmed that it will end its partnership with Tesla for the development of the Autopilot program. Tesla’s Autopilot system was designed in-house by the automaker and uses several different components, but Mobileye was an important partner supplying its EyeQ chip which processes the information from the Autopilot sensor’s suite.
The reason for the two companies parting ways is not entirely clear at this point, but based on Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua’s comments, it might have something to do with the aftermath of the fatal Autopilot accident in a Model S, which first surfaced a few weeks ago.
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Tesla’s Autopilot program has been getting bad press lately following a few accidents involving some features of the system, but there’s been virtually no attention to events where the Autopilot prevented or helped prevent accidents, or reduced the severity of an unavoidable impact.
Those instances can be described as non-events and therefore, they don’t get as much attention as the crashes, especially if they come with pictures of the aftermath which plays to our collective curiosity, but that doesn’t mean that those events are less important or any less impressive.
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