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Elon Musk just took charge of Model 3 production, saying its his most critical job right now

Elon Musk just took charge of Model 3 production, saying its his most critical job right now 0

by • Cars • Tags: ,

You can probably argue over whether it’s a good or a bad sign, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter today a report in The Information that he has taken over direct control of the division that’s producing Tesla’s Model 3 electric sedan after the company failed to meet the delivery goals it had set.

Specifically, Tesla had intended to produce 500 Model 3 cars per day, or 2,500 per week, by the end of last month. But according to a company-wide email to employees that was sent today and obtained by Jalopnik, Musk said Tesla has been making closer to 2,000 of the cars per week. (Musk estimated last July that Tesla would be making 20,000 of the cars per month by December.)

In his email — fired off at 3 am. PDT — Musk added that if “things go as planned today, we will comfortably exceed that number over a seven day period!”

Musk may have been referring in part to the reorganization. But while The Information reported that Musk had seemingly “pushed aside the company’s senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field, who had been overseeing manufacturing in recent months,” Musk quickly took issue with that characterization of events.

He complained on Twitter to Information reporter Amir Efrati, “Can’t believe you’re even writing about this. My job as CEO is to focus on what’s most critical, which is currently Model 3 production. Doug, who I regard as one of the world’s most talented engineering execs, is focused on vehicle engineering.”

Musk continued, tweeting: “About a year ago, I asked Doug to manage both engineering & production. He agreed that Tesla needed [engineering and production to be] better aligned, so we don’t design cars that are crazy hard to build. Right now, tho, better to divide & conquer, so I’m back to sleeping at factory. Car biz is hell …”

That Musk is feeling sensitive to press reports right now won’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows the company, given the string of negative publicity that Tesla has received in recent weeks.

In addition to a voluntary recall of 123,000 Model S vehicles that owes to a problem with the power-steer component of some of the cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week launched an investigation into the role of Tesla’s Autopilot in a fatal crash.

In fact, in a series of separate tweets today, Musk responded to the National Transportation Safety Board, a safety agency that said it was “unhappy” with Tesla’s decision on Friday to publish a blog post about the accident, given that investigations are ongoing.

In that post, Tesla said the driver, since identified as an Apple engineer, “had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision.” The company also noted that a highway safety barrier that might have lessened the impact of the collision had been “crushed in a prior accident without being replaced.”

The suggestion was plainly that Tesla can’t be blamed, at least not entirely, for the fatality.

In response to the NTSB’s newly public frustration over the release of these details by Tesla, Musk wrote on Twitter today, “Lot of respect for NTSB, but NHTSA regulates cars, not NTSB, which is an advisory body. Tesla releases critical crash data affecting public safety immediately & always will. To do otherwise would be unsafe.”

Tesla closed down 5.1 percent at $252.48 in trading today.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/02/elon-musk-just-took-charge-of-model-3-production-saying-its-his-most-critical-job-right-now/

Tesla car that crashed and killed driver was running on Autopilot, firm says

Tesla car that crashed and killed driver was running on Autopilot, firm says 0

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Company says driver took no action despite systems warnings in latest accident involving self-driving technology

Tesla has said a car that crashed in California last week, killing its driver, was operating on Autopilot.

The 23 March crash on highway 101 in Mountain View is the latest accident to involve self-driving technology. Earlier this month, a self-driving Volvo SUV that was being tested by the ride-hailing service Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.

Federal investigators are looking into the California crash, as well a crash in January of a Tesla Model S that may have been operating under the Autopilot system.

In a blogpost, Tesla said the driver of the sport-utility Model X that crashed in Mountain View, 38-year-old Apple software engineer Wei Huang, had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the drivers hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision.

The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.

Tesla also said the concrete highway divider had previously been damaged, increasing its impact on the car. The vehicle also caught fire, though Tesla said no one was in the vehicle when that happened.

The company said its Autopilot feature can keep speed, change lanes and self-park but requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel, in order to be able to take control and avoid accidents.

Autopilot does not prevent all accidents, Tesla said, but it does make them less likely.

No one knows about the accidents that didnt happen, Tesla said, only the ones that did. The consequences of the public not using Autopilot, because of an inaccurate belief that it is less safe, would be extremely severe.

There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year.

The company added that it care[s] deeply for and feel[s] indebted to those who chose to put their trust in us. However, we must also care about people now and in the future whose lives may be saved if they know that Autopilot improves safety.

None of this changes how devastating an event like this is or how much we feel for our customers family and friends. We are incredibly sorry for their loss.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/31/tesla-car-crash-autopilot-mountain-view

Tesla’s Model 3 Is the Best Electric Car You Can’t BuyYet

Tesla’s Model 3 Is the Best Electric Car You Can’t BuyYet 0

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The Model 3 is supposed to be Tesla’s humdrum car, the everyday, cut-price offering to the masses. Not the sort of thing that impresses Angelenos, so blasé about celebrities and rich kids valeting their supercars at restaurants. In LA, it takes a special vehicle to stand out.

Yet, as I’m driving around town in a (bright red) Model 3, I feel unusually conspicuous, attracting the eyes of passers-by, some of them walking into traffic for a closer look. Friends want a ride. Other Tesla owners come up to me to chat while charging. Surely, some of them are among the 450,000 people who have already put down a $1,000 deposit for the right to buy this car. And it turns out that driving one of the most anticipated vehicles, ever, is enough to shake these seen-it-all Angelenos to attention.

The real question is whether it lives up to the hype, to Elon Musk’s promise that this is the car for everyone. That’s what I wanted to find out, using the Model 3 to tool around LA, to hit freeways and winding roads, to traverse the desert and climb snow-covered mountains.

City Slicker

The car Tesla lent me to test is one of the first-production versions, and costs $57,000 when loaded with the currently non-optional options, including the premium package and long range battery. The first thing I did was look for misaligned panels, and try some speed humps to check for the squeaks and rattles that have plagued Model 3 buyers. I found none, but figure Tesla has given this loaner some extra scrutiny.

The automaker had similar quality control issues with early Model S and X production, and has mostly ironed those out. It’s fair to expect Musk & Co. will do the same here. So maybe driving this Model 3 is a bit like living in the future—this neatly finished model is the car Tesla wants to build for everyone. Eventually.

Heading to work in LA traffic means plenty of switching lanes to weave around the slow pokes, and that’s easy in the Model 3, which feels nimble. The steering takes just one full turn, center to lock, and feels super responsive. And it is very much a Tesla, with body-smooshing acceleration. It can’t out-sprint the top-end Model S, but its 5.1-second 0 to 60 mph time makes it quicker than cars like the VW Golf GTi and BMW’s 330i.

A space to stop is also never easy to find in LA, but Tesla’s Autopark system helps. I drive slowly past a gap, tap a pop-up icon on the touchscreen, and watch the car fold itself into a tight parallel space. It’s scary at first—“watch the wheels”, I found myself yelling at the touchscreen—but, much as it pains me to admit it, it’s probably better at parking than I am.

Tesla

Extreme Minimalism

If your friends are anything like mine, they’ll be most interested in the Model 3’s interior, whose minimal design would make Patrick Bateman’s New York apartment look cluttered. Tesla chucked out all the buttons, along with the instrument panel, traditional home of things like the speedometer. Every function in the Model 3 is controlled via, or displayed on, a centrally mounted 15-inch touchscreen.

I’m typically a fan of physical buttons, which are easy to find with minimal eyes-off-the-road time, and was apprehensive about Tesla’s extremist approach. But some modern cars have so many buttons across the dash and the steering wheel they look like a Yamaha synthesizer threw up, often with information split across several little screens. If designers insist on a screen, it should be like the Model 3’s: huge, high resolution, easy to read in sunlight, and smoothly responsive to touch, supporting gestures like pinch to zoom on the map. I found that most virtual buttons I needed (adjusting Autopilot speed, or the interior temperature) fell easily under hand, with my elbow on the center armrest for stability.

Glancing to the right to read the speed is a little odd, but I got used to it. Stranger is the blackness in front of the steering wheel at night. Everything on the left-hand side of the screen is easy to read, including the speedometer and Autopilot info. The stuff on the far right, like the turn-by-turn directions, requires a long glance away from the road, and is harder to see. Tesla is working on over-the-air software improvements to the interface, so that issue might be addressed in an update. It has already responded to complaints about the windshield wiper controls being hard to find, and made them more prominent.

Tesla

Charging is easy if you have a 220-volt outlet, the type you might use for a clothes dryer, in your garage. The car comes with an extension cord and mobile charger. That means I could leave every morning, with a full battery and the advertised 310 miles of range. The cheaper battery, when it’s available, will be good for 220 miles. If you live in an apartment, or park on the street, you’re going to have to plan more carefully. Same deal if you want to take a road trip—which I did.

Road Trippin'

On Saturday morning, after a couple of days of LA life with the Model 3, I use the Tesla app on my phone to pop open the frunk (Tesla’s regrettable term for the place other automakers put their engines) and stow my suitcase. I type “Palm Springs, California” into the navigation system. Based on Google Maps, with Tesla’s guidance on top, it’s one of the easiest to use I’ve seen in any car. I only got annoyed when, thanks to a bug, it showed the road conditions on one part of my journey as green, then jumped to a more realistic deep red when I was already trapped in traffic and zoomed in to check more closely.

On the 10 freeway, it’s time to try Autopilot, a $5,000 option, that I’m willing to bet every owner takes. The stalk on the right hand of the steering wheel that shifts between drive, reverse, and park, also turns on the semi-autonomous features, with a double tap down. Autopilot keeps the car in its lane, and a fixed distance from the car in front. It’ll brake to a full stop, and then set off again, which makes it super-convenient in this inexplicable weekend traffic. It handles straight roads well, but is less confident in corners, even gentle ones on the freeway. It’ll change lanes automatically, if rather abruptly, after I check that the coast is clear and press on indicator stalk in the direction I want to go. (As I returned the Model 3, I discovered Model S and X cars just started getting an update to their Autopilot software which drivers report improves it dramatically. The 3 is likely to get that too.)

Tesla stresses Autopilot is a driver aid, not replacement, and requires that you keep your hands on the wheel. Let go for too long and the screen starts flashing to tell you to get a grip. I found the warning triggered even when I had my hands resting gently on the wheel. Cadillac’s Super Cruise system, which tracks the position of the driver's head, is smarter.

LA to Palm Springs a 112-mile trip, so, technically, I can make it there and back on a single charge. But I want the option of driving around when I get there, and I’m turning up the AC up notch by notch as the temperature outside rises, which uses battery. (Even the front air vent flow is moved around by the touchscreen.)

So I decide to stop at one of Tesla’s Supercharger sites. Tesla is expanding its fast charger network to include more urban locations, instead of just having them spaced along freeways for long-distance travel. Even more than Autopilot and super-sized screens, this is Tesla’s top selling point. No other electric vehicle has such easy access to high-speed charging. I identify one of these newly opened stations in Riverside, California, a little over half-way to Palm Springs.

Urban Exploring

Charging an electric car, even at a Supercharger, takes a lot longer than filling a tank with gas. (Tesla says you can add 170 miles of range in 30 minutes.) To put a positive spin on my stop, I decide to be play the tourist. For 10 years I’ve sped past Riverside on the freeway, never giving it a second thought. On this trip, I pick up a walking guide, and discover a beautiful, historic, downtown. Fun the first time, but it could get boring on future trips. (City planners take note: Installing chargers will attract visitors.)

Unlike the Model S and Model X, which still typically come with at least some free supercharging, for the 3, Tesla now charges for the right to plug in. For me, in California, it's $0.26 per kWh. That means a charge from empty to full costs $19.50. If you charge at home, overnight, it's likely cheaper. And it's still a lot less than you pay to put gas in the tank.

Leaving Riverside with 300 miles of range means I arrive in Palm Springs with 250 to spare. That’s more than the range the Chevrolet Bolt has when full. It might cost $9K, but the battery capacity in this more expensive Model 3 is a revelation. It means I quickly have more confidence to go farther without worrying about where the nearest charger is. In other electrics, I keep one eye on the range meter.

And it means I’m brave enough to throw in a 60-mile detour on the way home, with a 6,000 feet elevation climb, on a high-speed twisty (and fun!) route. The Model 3 keeps up with a Porsche Cayman whose driver was enjoying the same roads, and felt planted through the corners thanks to the low center of gravity created by the battery under the floor. Zooming through the mountain roads is so quiet and effortless I find myself wishing for some paddle-shifters so I could blip my engine and downshift into corners too, just to add some drama. (Hey Elon, can we get some sound effects with the next software update?)

California’s Palms to Pines highway leads me from the desert into areas of the San Jacinto mountains that had a light dusting of snow. The Model 3, even in its current rear-drive configuration handles it well, cutting power to save traction. The upcoming dual motor, all-wheel drive version will likely be even better. Now the temperature is dropping, but the seat heaters get super warm, super fast … as long as you’re in the front. Tesla hasn’t yet designed a button for the touchscreen to turn on the heaters in the rear seats. (That’s coming soon, with a software update.)

Future Gazing

The Model 3 is the vehicle Tesla designed for the future, and for fully autonomous driving, with a suite of cameras around the outside and a small supercomputer onboard. Whether that's possible without the addition of lidar laser sensors is still up in the air (Elon Musk says yes, most everyone else says no). But if it is, then the clever touches like using your phone to unlock the car, the lack of physical controls, and even the artificially intelligent auto wipers, start to make sense. They all mean a computer could assume control easily, drive autonomously, and possibly pick up paying passengers.

The physical car is well engineered, styled, and has great performance. I get an average of four miles out of every kWh of battery, including high-speed freeway and mountain road driving. That makes this also one of the most efficient electrics, beating Tesla’s other machines.

The virtual side is less solid. If you’re bored of me mentioning software updates, the Model 3 isn’t a car for you. Accepting you’re driving a work-in-progress is part of Tesla ownership, as is patience. The company initially said it would build 5,000 cars a week by the end of last year, but in its last update, revised that target to June 2018.

The backlog of pre-orders is years long, even if Musk hits his most ambitious production goals (he rarely does). But in this case, waiting may be a good thing. It'll give Tesla some time to iron out early production bugs, and to introduce more options, so the Model 3 can live up to its potential as the best, affordable, electric car that you can’t buy. Not yet, anyway.

An Electric Future

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Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-model-3-review/

Heres how to keep track of Elon Musks Roadster and Starman in space

Heres how to keep track of Elon Musks Roadster and Starman in space 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Elon Musk’s Starman, the mannequin driver of the Tesla Roadster SpaceX launched aboard its Falcon Heavy rocket, is taking a trip around our solar system, in a large elliptical orbit that will bring him relatively close to Mars, the Sun and other heavenly bodies. But how to track the trip, now that the Roadster’s onboard batteries are out of juice and no longer transmitting live footage?

Thanks to the work of Ben Pearson, a SpaceX fan and electrical engineer working in the aerospace industry, who created ‘Where is Roadster,’ a website that makes use of JPL Horizons data to track the progress of the Roadster and Starman through space, and to predict its path and let you know when it’ll come close to meeting up with various planets and the Sun.

The website tells you the Roadster’s current position, too, as well as its speed and whether it’s moving towards or away from Earth and Mars at any given moment. It’s not officially affiliated with SpaceX or Tesla, but it is something Elon Musk is apparently using to help remember where he parked his galactic ride.

At least he can stop freaking out about leaving it onboard the Heavy just before launch.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/18/heres-how-to-keep-track-of-elon-musks-roadster-and-starman-in-space/

Get a gorgeous wallpaper of the Tesla in space

Get a gorgeous wallpaper of the Tesla in space

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , ,

Image: r/wallpapers

Say hello to your new wallpaper. 

And then say thank you to SpaceX, and to Reddit. On Tuesday, Reddit user “AB-nebula” posted a gorgeous wallpaper of the space hero Starman — a spacesuit behind the wheel of the Tesla Roadster Elon Musk launched into space on board the Falcon Heavy rocket — with Earth in the background, to r/Wallpapers. 

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk’s ‘Starman’ is our new space hero

The images were first shared to Twitter by Marques Brownlee. 

If you, like us, want to be constantly reminded of Starman and his courage, you have a number of wallpaper options. Other Reddit users have incorporated our favorite Tesla driver into creative wallpapers, such as user “Tutkular” who vectorized the images for a cool futuristic effect. 

And user “PutThatCatDown” rolled out an over-the-shoulder look at the Earth and the car’s “Don’t Panic” message. 

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy launched our dear friend into space Tuesday afternoon. If all goes as planned, he and his vehicle should be floating around space for approximately a billion years — so there should be plenty of photo opportunities. 

WATCH: Here’s how NASA is preparing the largest telescope ever built for space

Read more: https://mashable.com/2018/02/07/starman-wallpapers/

People Keep Confusing Their Teslas for Self-Driving Cars

People Keep Confusing Their Teslas for Self-Driving Cars

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We are entering a dangerous period in the development of self-driving cars. Today, you can buy a Cadillac, Volvo, Tesla, Audi, and even a Nissan that will do some of your driving for you, as long as you stay on top of things. It's all part of the steady trek toward the fully autonomous vehicles that will let you fully check out, and catch an in-car movie or two on your way to wherever you're going.

But we’re not there yet, and a growing body of evidence shows that these partially autonomous systems are lulling drivers into a false sense of security. In one example after another, it's clear too many people don’t get, or ignore the limitations of these robocars-in-training. They zone out, look away, even fall asleep. And they cause crashes.

Automakers anticipated such problems, and have tried to respond with systems that keep drivers focused and aware of their responsibilities, even when their hands are off the wheel and feet are nowhere near the pedals. But two recent incidents, each involving a Tesla, have thrown the problem back into the headlines, and those solutions into doubt.

On Monday, a Tesla Model S smashed into a stopped firetruck that had responded to an accident on the freeway in Culver City, California. The car buried itself under the rear of the truck, crumpling the hood to less than a third of its original length and folding it over the windshield. Nobody was hurt. According to the fire department, the driver claimed that the car was “on autopilot”. The National Transportation Safety Board is now reportedly considering an investigation into the crash.

Over the weekend, a driver in another Tesla Model S sedan was arrested and charged with a DUI when he was found passed out behind the wheel on San Francisco's Bay Bridge. His blood alcohol content was two times the legal limit. He told the California Highway Patrol officers it was OK: The car was on autopilot.

Tesla’s response to both hiccups is to reiterate what the car tells drivers before they can engage Autopilot for the first time: It is their job to stay fully attentive, and to keep their hands on the wheel, at all times. A spokesperson pointed out that the owner's manual reads, “Autosteer is not designed to, and will not, steer Model S around objects partially or completely in the driving lane,” which may explain why the car hit the firetruck. As for the drunk guy, if the car detects your hands aren't on the wheel, it will beep at you. If you still don't touch the wheel, the car will put on its hazards and slow to a stop, figuring that's better than rolling along with no human supervisor. (Most of these systems do the same thing.) Great if you have a heart attack. Not great if you're trying to get away with driving over the limit.

Both drivers seemed to expect more from their cars than they can actually deliver. And that's understandable, since they give the impression of being self-driving for mile after mile of uneventful highway driving. And the better they work, the more drivers will trust them, to the point where it's easy to forget that they're not infallible. That's a serious problem, because these controls are not meant to be relied on.

“I think there’s a broad misunderstanding about semi-autonomous versus autonomous,” says Aaron Ames, an engineering professor at Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies. “This will only grow over time.”

That's because lots of automakers are boarding the semi-self-driving train, eager to offer customers the chance to pay extra for a swanky new feature. There's Tesla's Autopilot, Cadillac's Super Cruise, Audi’s Traffic Jam Pilot, Nissan’s ProPilot Assist. Mercedes and Infiniti have similar systems. They all work by combining existing safety features—mostly adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, and automatic emergency braking—and use cameras and radars to stay in their lane and a safe distance from other vehicles.

You can see why manufacturers are tempted to slap simple, catchy names on these collections of kit: They're a lot easier to sell that way. And you can understand why drivers buying a car with a function called "pilot" think the robot can do all the work. But it can't. All these systems rely on the human paying attention, ready to jump in in case the car encounters something it can't handle on its own, like the sudden disappearance of lane lines.

They have different ways of checking for that attention. Tesla requires the driver touch the wheel occasionally, to prove they’re there and awake. Cadillac allows drivers to go hands free, but uses an infrared camera to make sure they keep their face pointed at the road. And they have different ways of getting the driver to focus: They beep and flash warnings mostly. Audi's system will tighten your seat belt and tap the brakes, just to get your attention.

All of this is not to say these systems don’t work. They do, and they increase safety significantly. The Volvo XC60 SUV was awarded first place in the UK’s What Car? safety awards on Tuesday night. Not only did it ace the crash test, said judge Matthew Avery, of Thatcham Research. "It is also bursting at the seams with safety technology to avoid the crash happening at all."

Thatcham says automatic emergency braking alone cuts rear-end crashes by 38 percent. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s report into a fatal crash between a Tesla with Autopilot engaged and a truck, in Florida in 2016, concluded that crash rates dropped 40 percent after the Autosteer funtion was added.

Yet a National Transportation Safety Board report into the same crash was less forgiving, putting some of the blame on Tesla, for selling a system that allowed the driver, Joshua Brown, to ignore warnings and abuse the system to let the car effectively drive itself.

The answer to this growing problem is twofold. First, people must learn to be better drivers, and not abuse these fledgling technologies. “Anytime people are given a system, they’ll try to exploit it. Then the car companies will say ‘That isn’t what it was designed for,’ and then we’re at an impasse,” says Ames.

And automakers need better ways to teach their customers that lesson. Better yet, they need to design a system that can't be so easily abused. Because, as Elon Musk once said, "Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."

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Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-crash-dui/

Why Tesla’s Autopilot Can’t See a Stopped Firetruck

Why Tesla’s Autopilot Can’t See a Stopped Firetruck

by • Cars • Tags: , ,

On Monday, a Tesla Model S slammed into the back of a stopped firetruck on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles County. The driver apparently told the fire department the car was in Autopilot mode at the time. The crash highlighted the shortcomings of the increasingly common semi-autonomous systems that let cars drive themselves in limited conditions.

This surprisingly non-deadly debacle also raises a technical question: How is it possible that one of the most advanced driving systems on the planet doesn't see a freaking fire truck, dead ahead?

Tesla didn't confirm the car was running Autopilot at the time of the crash, but its manual does warn that the system is ill-equipped to handle this exact sort of situation: “Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you instead.”

Volvo's semi-autonomous system, Pilot Assist, has the same shortcoming. Say the car in front of the Volvo changes lanes or turns off the road, leaving nothing between the Volvo and a stopped car. "Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed," Volvo's manual reads, meaning the cruise speed the driver punched in. "The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.” In other words, your Volvo won't brake to avoid hitting a stopped car that suddenly appears up ahead. It might even accelerate towards it.

The same is true for any car currently equipped with adaptive cruise control, or automated emergency braking. It sounds like a glaring flaw, the kind of horrible mistake engineers race to eliminate. Nope. These systems are designed to ignore static obstacles because otherwise, they couldn't work at all.

“You always have to make a balance between braking when it’s not really needed, and not braking when it is needed,” says Erik Coelingh, head of new technologies at Zenuity, a partnership between Volvo and Autoliv formed to develop driver assistance technologies and self-driving cars. He's talking about false positives. On the highway, slamming the brakes for no reason can be as dangerous as not stopping when you need to.

“The only safe scenario would be don’t move,” says Aaron Ames, from Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies. That doesn't exactly work for driving. “You have to make reasonable assumptions about what you care about and what you don’t.”

Raj Rajkumar, who researches autonomous driving at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks those assumptions concern one of Tesla's key sensors. “The radars they use are apparently meant for detecting moving objects (as typically used in adaptive cruise control systems), and seem to be not very good in detecting stationary objects," he says.

That's not nearly as crazy as it may seem. Radar knows the speed of any object it sees, and is also simple, cheap, robust, and easy to build into a front bumper. But it also detects lots of things a car rolling down the highway needn't worry about, like overhead highway signs, loose hubcaps, or speed limit signs. So engineers make a choice, telling the car to ignore these things and keep its eyes on the other cars on the road: They program the system to focus on the stuff that's moving.

This unsettling compromise may be better than nothing, given evidence that these systems prevent other kinds of crashes and save lives. And it's not much of a problem if every human in a semi-autonomous vehicle followed the automakers' explicit, insistent instructions to pay attention at all times, and take back control if they see a stationary vehicle up ahead.

The long term solution is to combine a several sensors, with different abilities, with more computing power. Key amongst them is lidar. These sensors use lasers to build a precise, detailed map of the world around the car, and can easily distinguish between a hub cap and a cop car. The problem is that compared to radar, lidar is a young technology. It's still very expensive, and isn't robust enough to survive a life of hitting potholes and getting pelted with rain and snow. Just about everybody working on a fully self-driving system—the kind that doesn't depend on lazy, inattentive humans for support—plans to use lidar, along with radar and cameras.

Except for Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO insists he can make his cars fully autonomous—no supervision necessary—with just radars and cameras. He hasn't proven his claim just yet, and no one knows if he ever will. Lidar's price and reliability problems are less of an issue when it comes to a taxi-like service, where a provider can amortize the cost over time and perform regular maintenance. But in today's cars, meant for average or modestly wealthy consumers, it's a no-go.

In the meantime, we're stuck with a flawed system, the result of a compromise made to navigate the world at speed. And when even the best systems available can't see a big red big firetruck, it's a stark reminder of how long and winding the path to autonomy actually is.

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How did Tesla make some of its cars travel further during Hurricane Irma?

How did Tesla make some of its cars travel further during Hurricane Irma?

by • Cars • Tags: ,

The electric-car giant gave customers a lifeline by remotely boosting their vehicles battery capacity. But this act of kindness also highlighted that it had been selling identical cars at different prices

Tesla drivers who fled Hurricane Irma last weekend received an unexpected lesson in modern consumer economics along the way. As they sat on choked highways, some of the electric-car giants more keenly priced models suddenly gained an extra 30 or so miles in range thanks to a silent free upgrade.

The move, confirmed by Tesla, followed the request of one Florida driver for a limit on his cars battery to be lifted. Teslas cheaper models, introduced last year, have the same 75KwH battery as its more costly cars, but software limits it to 80% of range. Owners can otherwise buy an upgrade for several thousands of dollars. And because Teslas software updates are online, the company can make the changes with the flick of a virtual switch.

It is, points out economist Alex Tabarrok, an example of price discrimination in this case, the art of selling superficially worse versions of the same or similar product for less. And it is nothing new. The only thing that has changed is that companies can now change the offering during the life cycle of the product, says Dr Georg Tacke, a consumer pricing expert and the chief executive of global consultancy Simon Kucher. As more software gets into our hardware, the more we are going to see this.

In Damaged Goods, a paper on the subject published by MIT in 1996, economists Raymond Deneckere and Preston McAfee showed how limiting products to make them cheaper can even cost a company more in the short term. In 1990, IBM launched LaserPrinter E, a cheaper version of its LaserPrinter. The only difference? A chip modification that slowed the printing speed to five rather than 10 pages per minute.

But, as Tacke explains, manufacturing two genuinely different versions of a product costs a lot more. The challenge is to predict the willingness to pay of customers while making them feel as if they have benefited from value or better features. If you have one product and the price is too high, people dont buy it. But if its too low, you dont exploit some customers willingness to pay, he says. So you differentiate and, yes, that means damaging the product in some way.

This is why there is now also a market for remapping modern cars: tweaking their software to unleash hidden performance like a video game cheat without touching the engines. Mobile phone and household appliance makers use similar marketing ploys to differentiate products and sell more overall.

But should we feel cheated by this sleight of hand? Get used to it, says Tacke. The key to pulling it off, he adds, is to manage expectations and to do the research to get the prices right. Tesla customers driving the cheaper cars knew what the payoff was. And the company had the last laugh; it no longer offers cheaper cars with the damaged battery, because most people bought the upgrade anyway.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2017/sep/11/tesla-hurricane-irma-battery-capacity

Tesla said to be working on self-driving tech for electric semi truck

Tesla said to be working on self-driving tech for electric semi truck

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Tesla is working on self-driving technology specifically tied to its forthcoming electric semi-truck plans, according to a Reuters report. The tech would allow the transport trucks to move in convoy formation with a lead vehicle providing guidance for autonomous follow trucks, according to emails discovered by Reuters in which Tesla discusses the work with the Nevada DMV.

Tesla is also set to meet with the California DMV to discuss autonomous trucking technology, according to comments made by that organization to Reuters. Tesla has already confirmed that it is working on an all-electric semi truck, set to be revealed in more detail at a planned event teased by Elon Musk to take place in September.

This is relatively familiar territory for any company making serious investment in self-driving tech: Uber acquired Otto, a company founded by former Google self-driving car team members dedicated to autonomous trucking, and it continues that work under its Advanced Technologies Group. Waymo, the Alphabet company created from the Google self-driving car project, has also recently revealed that it also is in the early stages of creating autonomous truck tech.

While neither Tesla nor Elon Musk has mentioned autonomy in relation to their electric transport truck plans, the automakers CEO has discussed potential surprises to be revealed alongside the big rig this fall. Its also been working a lot on Autopilot improvements, something Musk said during his most recent Tesla earnings call that he himself spends a lot of time on.

Platooning could mean that the autonomy requirements arent much more technically advanced that those found in current Autopilot systems for consumer Tesla vehicles. A lead vehicle with a human driver could be used, with autonomous follow vehicles that cut down on the total need for drivers and increase overall efficiency.

Tesla reportedly wanted to meet with Nevada to discuss the testing of two prototype trucks, so it sounds like the project is quite far along. The automaker hasnt yet applied for a license to test the vehicles, however, so that could be coming later, once the trucks themselves are a known quantity revealed to the public.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/tesla-said-to-be-working-on-self-driving-tech-for-electric-semi-truck/