I know I wrote about Tesla in my last passion blog, but I believe this feature that is in all Teslas is something very interesting to me and is revolutionizing the car community. The idea of self-driving cars was only in TV shows and people’s imaginations. Nowadays, many new cars come with some sort of cruise control along with some cars that have lane-keep assist. Yet, nobody talks about the company that was always ahead of the game in terms of self-driving cars: Tesla. Tesla introduced Tesla Autopilot in September of 2014 all cars they built since then included the Autopilot hardware. It was not until October of 2015, though, when they released all of the Autopilot features through a software update. That’s right, vehicle owners did not have to bring their car into the service center to get the update, they just had to let the car update overnight through wi-fi, similar to an iPhone software update.
The update combines the features of adaptive cruise control with Autosteer, a lane centering function designed to keep Tesla vehicles within painted lane lines. The update also included self-parking (both parallel and perpendicular), lane changes, and summon. Summon allows the vehicle owner to move the car forward and backward solely through the Tesla app. A common use would be having the car back itself out of a tight parking spot. Nobody has to get in the car, they just have to use the app.
In October 2016, Tesla announced that all cars produced since then will have autopilot hardware with “full self-driving” capabilities. While they mentioned at the time it would still take a few more years before release, the car would be able to drive itself without any human intervention. In theory, a human wouldn’t even need to be in the car.
Unfortunately, throughout this timeline, there were about five instances where a Tesla owner was on the road using the autopilot feature and they got into a fatal crash. Tesla was involved in a lot of lawsuits, but they kept mentioning that even though these crashes occurred, the chance of getting into a car crash while using Autopilot is still much lower than crashing with a human driving due to all of the sensors and cameras the car has along with the instant reaction time of technology. As a result, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Tesla issued a cease-and-desist letter to the seller of the “Autopilot buddy” product, a device that makes Tesla’s steering wheel sensors “think” that a driver’s hands are pulling on the wheel, allowing drivers to engage Autopilot without paying attention to the task of driving.
In April 2019, Tesla held a press conference and Elon Musk talked about Tesla Robotaxis, where Tesla owners will be able to have their cars serve as robotaxis and profit from them. They also released a two minute time lapse video of a car driving by itself without any human intervention at all (see link below).
While that hasn’t been released yet, now some Tesla owners are finally getting beta versions of the full self-driving software. The car is able to completely drive itself. Stop for traffic lights, make turns, park, make lane changes and overtake on highways, just about anything. The driver still has to pay close attention and touch the wheel every so often to confirm their attention, but the car is making a lot more progress. In the future, as long as government regulations allow it, we should expect to see Tesla robotaxis along with self-driving cars that have no humans inside. Tesla is a significant contributor to the self-driving cars revolution.
Video: https://youtu.be/tlThdr3O5Qo
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Good post and nice writing! Please include media in your next post. Points can be taken off if corrections are not made. Otherwise, keep up the good work:) – VP