Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced tonight that going forward all Tesla models will be capable of Level 5 autonomous driving.
Tesla’s Elon Musk announced tonight that all of the company’s vehicles going forward will be equipped to be fully autonomous, including its mass-market car, the Model 3, when it debuts late in 2017.
Musk, who delayed the announcement by two days, said the vehicles are Level 5 autonomy capable, which means they are capable of dealing with all environments and traffic conditions. The new vehicles now utilize eight cameras providing 360-degree coverage around the car.
He believes that the safety level of the fully autonomous vehicle is “twice that of a person, maybe better,” he said during a late evening conference call. “I think that it’s unexpected by most people.”
While the technology on each model is capable of full autonomy, there are no regulatory approvals in place allowing the vehicles to operate in that mode. Musk believes that approval will come soon, perhaps by the end of the year.
In the meantime, the current models with Autopilot – using the equipment level termed “Hardware One” – are actually more autonomous than the new vehicles rolling off the line with “Hardware Two.” However, Musk noted that will even out as regulatory approvals give the new models more freedom to use the technology.
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Not only do Teslas come with more cameras, sensors and improved sonar, the computing power to drive all the systems has been up 40 times.
“It’s like driving with a supercomputer on board,” he said.
Eight surround cameras provide 360 degrees of 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.
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A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength that is able to see through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.