All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware


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@elonmusk
Will post video of a Tesla navigating a complex urban environment shortly. That was what took the extra couple of days.

 

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All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

 

The Tesla Team

October 19, 2016

 

Self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future. Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.

 

We are excited to announce that, as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.

 

To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software. Together, this system provides a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses.

 

Model S and Model X vehicles with this new hardware are already in production, and customers can purchase one today.

 

Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience. While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control. As these features are robustly validated we will enable them over-the-air, together with a rapidly expanding set of entirely new features. As always, our over-the-air software updates will keep customers at the forefront of technology and continue to make every Tesla, including those equipped with first-generation Autopilot and earlier cars, more capable over time.

 

 

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No sign LIDAR made the cut. They were testing LIDARs this summer, but perhaps the new radar point cloud outperformed it.

 

NVidia Titan GPU based neural network (Musk also co-founded OpenAI)

 

New forward facing radar (w/the point cloud) 

Capable of Level 5 autonomy (no controls)

Cameras increased from 1 to 8, with 3 forward cams for redundancy.

820 foot range

360° 12 sensor ultrasonic array
 

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9 minutes ago, DocM said:

Let's try to embed it...

 

http://player.vimeo.com/video/188105076

 

Nope, ain't cutting it.

Yeah I tried, think Neowin only plays ball with Youtube videos.

 

Here's a few tweets from Elon Musk re. the self driving

 

 

 

I know that this stuff is still years from being part of the norm, but seeing what it can do now and thinking that it's going to have years to be developed and refined, it's all very exciting. 

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So, you can go somewhere, get out, tell your car to go find itself a parking spot whilst you go do stuff, then summon it back to wherever you ended up?

 

Awesome.  I want one!  Where do I sign up?

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30 minutes ago, DocM said:

Tesla.com, then stand in line ;)

Aah, if only it were that easy.

 

Biggest block to me getting a Tesla EV isn't the price, it's recharging it! There aren't a lot of recharging stations in the UK, though there are 2 in my area BUT, the biggest blocker is that I don't have a drive and have to park 20-100 meters from my house, sometimes more.

 

Ideally, these EV's need a recharging time of single digit minutes...

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At a Tesla Supercharger, or in a home garage with 3 phase power like ours*, they can charge about halfway in under a half an hour.

 

* many older homes, home garages or home shops in the Detroit area are wired with high-end 3-phase. Much more common than in the rest of the US.

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1 hour ago, FloatingFatMan said:

Aah, if only it were that easy.

 

Biggest block to me getting a Tesla EV isn't the price, it's recharging it! There aren't a lot of recharging stations in the UK, though there are 2 in my area BUT, the biggest blocker is that I don't have a drive and have to park 20-100 meters from my house, sometimes more.

 

Ideally, these EV's need a recharging time of single digit minutes...

So it can just go charge by itself at night, and it can park by itself, I think it sounds ideal for the situation you are describing :-)

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What surprised me is the Level 5 Autonomy. That's a vehicle without controls, which services like taxis, Uber etc will love.

 

It'll also be a boon to handicappers in the Tesla passenger van they discussed earlier this year - just add a lift and chair restraints.

 

Damn....Musk sure does like stirring the pot....

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If I understand the levels correctly, 4 is fully autonomous, but driver can take over if he wants, but five is fully autonomous and the driver doesn't even have the possibility of taking over whether he wants to or not? Correct?
Does this mean we will see Teslas with no steering wheel soon, or is it that there will be an option to disable it, in case you want your car to drive the kids to school, with no possibility of them messing with the car, or similar?
Have we been giving indications in this direction, and what do you guys think? I personally think the amount people ready to buy a car where they are prohibited from driving it manually is very small, but it could perhaps be an idea for companies driving their employees around, so they can work while driving, or some new kind of taxi service?

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2 hours ago, SALSN said:

If I understand the levels correctly, 4 is fully autonomous, but driver can take over if he wants, but five is fully autonomous and the driver doesn't even have the possibility of taking over whether he wants to or not? Correct?

 

Correct. Ford, GM and others are heading to that option as well, and the Autonomy Scale was defined by NHTSA ,so the Feds are on board.

 

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Does this mean we will see Teslas with no steering wheel soon, or is it that there will be an option to disable it, in case you want your car to drive the kids to school, with no possibility of them messing with the car, or similar?

 

You'll see the option across the industry.

 

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Have we been giving indications in this direction, and what do you guys think? I personally think the amount people ready to buy a car where they are prohibited from driving it manually is very small,[)quote]

 

Not necessarily. People get tickets for eating, texting, surfing while driving now. With full autonomy they can retire that risk and chill - like on a bus or subway.

 

 
 

but it could perhaps be an idea for companies driving their employees around, so they can work while driving, or some new kind of taxi service?

All of the above, though with Tesla's captured  data showing a drastically lower rate of accidents vs a human driver it may mainstream and human driving may be akin to having a concealed weapons permit.

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I am 100% for driver-less cars, im sick of driving in city traffic, trying to find a park. It just does my head in. However, im not ready to give up my ability to drive it at all, there are times when driving your car is something a computer cant figure out, like going camping and driving across a field to where you are camping, parking your car on the yard so you can load it with crap. Then there is the situation of the car not doing things illegal that you know is the better solution, ie truck unloading with double white lines, you need to go around otherwise you will sit there forever. But yes, sign me up for a driverless car for the normal day to day with the option to drive manually.

 

Just if I had the money......... anybody up to buying me one? 

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We will see how much they are in Aus, we probs wont get them here till 2020 anyways about time for a new car. The misses wants one when they come out.

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

I'm still not convinced that self driving cars are ready for mass use. Are they smart enough to slow down when there are a bunch of kids playing close to the road? Will they realise that the deer you see in the ditch could jump out any minute? If a paper bag blows in front of it, will it know that it can safely drive over it and not slam on the brakes to avoid hitting it? Sur, it may have faster reflexes than a human, but it will not have that intuitive sense that a hazard is near that years of experience driving gives you.

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Both the kids and the deer would be seen and, if they are moving objects, should be identified as hazards.   Not sure what it'd do if the kids or deer were completely stationary though.. Kids aren't likely to be, but deer are...

 

Of course, the car also wouldn't be speeding AND can react far faster to a new hazard than you possibly could, so the chances of an accident are still quite small.

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I'd love a self driving Tesla, it would make plenty of sense for me, just wish I could afford one.

 

I do have questions about the self driving mode though, and how it copes with the unusual situations (more from a 'I'm interested how they solved that problem' rather than a 'I bet it doesn't work if...'). Like how does it handle traffic lights with failed bulbs? Poorly painted/repainted road markings. Will it work with 'Solar Frikkin Roadways'? (that's in jest, they're a stupid idea)

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