Every time Elon Musk makes this kind of announcement, his engineering departments groan.<p>As I understand, they have folks actively managing Musk trying to prevent him from promising the moon :)
Wow, I didn't realize they had been building in the necessary sensors all along. To just light this up one day for the existing fleet with an OTA update is nothing short of astounding.
I'm not positive on this but I believe Tesla either uses technology or licenses patents directly from Mercedes-Benz regarding their whole "self-driving" and "autopilot" marketing here.<p>Case in point: my current car does a variety of self-driving tasks such as:<p>- Autonomous braking<p>- Active lane keeping assist to steer you in the lane if the radar and cameras detect you are swerving<p>- PRE-SAFE collision prevention plus that will autonomously brake if it detects an imminent impact<p>- Pedestrian awareness system that will autonomously brake if it detects a pedestrian is entering the range of the long, medium and short range radar<p>- Distronic Plus that will accelerate and brake according to both the vehicle in front and behind you from 0 mph up to 100mph<p>- Attention assist that employs various sensor to detect drowsiness and alert the driver audibly and via haptic feedback if it's time to take a break.<p>- Active blind spot assist that will audibly, visually and via haptic feedback alert the driver that a car has entered your hotspot and prevent you from entering that particular lane<p>So while the Tesla camp is and should be excited about "self-driving" enhancements, Mercedes-Benz has been doing this for well over 2 years now with some of the technology above even becoming standard features on non-high end Mercedes vehicles such as the S-Class with the appropriate packages.<p>I don't really see much but hype with respect to Tesla's announcement.<p>Good link here: <a href="http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/safety" rel="nofollow">http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/safety</a>
"self-driving car" and "car capable driving itself on highway under optimal conditions" are 2 totally different things. The real excitement comes when I can tell my car to go pick up the kids from school or drop me off at the airport and then drive itself back home. Anyways this is a great step in the right direction but its not the game changing tech we're all waiting for.
"Mostly self-driving" just seems crazy to me. As soon as the car is able to drive on a major highway, you're going to have "asleep at the wheel" issues, and the car cannot simply hand back control to the driver.<p>There have been times when I've misjudged my level of tiredness. Drifting out of lane is a good marker that you've screwed up and need to pull over immediately and sleep.<p>Does Tesla have some way to determine wakefulness or to safely pull over if the driver fails to respond?
The insurance / responsibility question really shows how moronic bureaucracy has made us.<p>To rephrase naysayers in a more first degree way: "sure there would be less accidents than when the vehicle is driven by a glorified ape, but for the fewer people still killed or maimed, we wouldn't be sure whom to blaim. So we'll keep killing more of them through ape drivers, rather than rush the paperwork-rethinking trauma".
An interesting implication of that statement is that all the hardware to make this functionality work is already in the vehicle if it's just a software update.
It's not likely that this "autopilot mode" is close to the state of the art. See for example what kind of technique Audi has put into their prototype A7:<p><a href="http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1029470_autonomous-audi-a7-concept-steers-itself-from-san-francisco-to-las-vegas-for-ces" rel="nofollow">http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1029470_autonomous-audi-a...</a><p>I can't believe Tesla has all these sensor already build in.<p>Plus Audi, Mercedes, etc. have all enormous experience in vehicle dynamics, which is critical in handeling automatic reactions like full braking and sudden fast steering at higher speeds.<p>The critical part is what does so car do if it requests driver interaction but the driver does not response. Brake? On a highway?<p>Autopilot will come, but not in the three month. That's just hilarious.
It looks like Tesla is just trying to play catch up with some other companies. Volvo already has a car with self driving technology, Chrysler also has a very good near-self-driving system.
<i>To Musk, highway speeds are not the challenge; the complexity of the landscape is. “Highway cruise is easy, low speed is easy, it’s medium that's hard. Being able to recognize what you’re seeing and make the right decision in that suburban environment in that 10 mph to 50 mph zone is the challenging portion.”</i><p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2898118/elon-musk-teslas-could-drive-themselves-today.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcworld.com/article/2898118/elon-musk-teslas-coul...</a>
Two points in the article bring up an interesting thought- Will autonomous highway driving make the recharging stops more or less annoying? If you're not actively driving the car, will you have less fatigue and so less need or desire for a 30 minute recharging break every few hundred miles?
Sounds great, but I'd prefer a simple slow/stop crash avoidance when there is an object slowing/stopped in front of the car. What is he status on that, anyone know?<p>The Tesla forums on the subject are filled with geniuses advising people to drive better, in lieu of such important safety features.
So torn on this because I fall into the chest beating, love to drive my car set but I also remember how much reading I got done when I was younger and used to use the train to commute.<p>Having that time back is a very seductive proposition.<p>What I do wonder though is what's the point of having your own car, if all cars are autonomous then isn't that essentially a tram system? How long would it take before there are established routes and taking <i>your</i> car to a given location is no different to hopping on any one of the other cars that are heading there anyway?<p>Surely the one of the first businesses to be radically impacted by widespread autonomous vehicles is the taxi industry?<p>I can't see an outcome where pretty soon it's not just a fancy tramway.
I'm looking forward to summoning my self-driving car from my Apple Watch and living out my childhood Knight Rider fantasies. (I know, only on private property in the early stages -- but still, pretty darn cool.)
Does anyone know what my car insurance rate would do if I got a car that will let me nap or read a book on the way to work? That is one major issue I haven't seen addressed.
Well, it's pretty clear that the headline is a bait for page views... Anyways, steps in the good direction, but far from the self-driving cars we all have on our minds...
This feature is great. Perhaps once such cars become the majority on the road, traffic flow could be optimized resulting in a faster commute during rush hours.
I am not sure I agree on the two hundred mile threshold, maybe for the family commuter car. however no electric of that range will ever replace the car for trips to grandmas.<p>let alone the price differential between an equivalent gas powered car is going to have to be a lot closer to justify the limitations of an electric.
I'm sceptical that they'll be allowed to deploy this.<p>But hey -- They should just push the update with a harcoded feature toggle keeping the functionality off. Then the line they tow is "Oops! Someone rooted their car and overrode our safety!"
The Tesla Model S has forward-looking radar, ultrasonic sensors on all sides, and a forward-looking camera. That's marginally enough for automatic driving in routine freeway situations.
I love Tesla, but Musk's starting to smell a little like Peter Molyneux -- promising the world and delivering little. Get the Model X out (2 years late and counting...)