Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Tesla - New AI driving hardware!

The safety/autopilot/self driving on Teslas - model S, X, and ☰ just went to hyperspace...

Yesterday ( for my birthday ha!) Tesla unveiled this upgrade to STANDARD hardware.

From one camera -> 8 surround cameras, 3 redundant forward, higher res/range.
Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors 2 times the range and resolution.
Better forward radar 160m ( 524' - 1/10th mile, able to see around and under cars)
GPS upgrade to higher accuracy plus software upgrades.
IMU Inertial measuring unit upgrade.

Last and biggest a new NVIDIA processor that delivers a more than order of magnitude (40x) processing upgrade - basically a small supercomputer utilizing NVIDIA's newest parallel graphic processing tech. Motley Fool has been recommending buying NVIDIA for this very reason.

Safety improvements from 2x standard human safety now to potentially a 10x safety improvement when using the autopilot and self driving suite.

Activating the hardware on an S or X costs $5000 to unlock enhanced auto pilot and another $3000 to unlock self driving. However the standard upgraded hardware will support a standard safety set of features: Automatic Emergency Braking - Designed to detect objects that the car may impact and applies the brakes accordingly.  Side Collision Warning - Warns the driver of potential collisions with obstacles alongside the car.  Front Collision Warning - Helps warn of impending collisions with slower moving or stationary cars. Auto High Beams - Adjusts high/low beams as required.

So even the standard set if I can't afford the increased cost of autopilot is pretty cool. Still autopilot going from $2500 to $3000 to $5000 is a bit tough on the wallet.  Also self driving won't unlock until regulators allow it. Does that mean you pay for it but have to wait 4 years for the Federal Highway Safety folks to approve it?  Finally not unlocking a feature at purchase means it costs $1000 more to unlock at a later date. Yuck - that is a bit stiff. Still - a self driving car?

Tesla self driving and autopilot

3 comments:

  1. Great post, if you can afford to unlock all the features, then do it with the exception of the self-driving, no only because of the wait, but in my case, I love driving and I think car's software is already too intrusive.
    Salvage Tesla

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    1. Appreciate the comment - first on the whole blog - chuckle...

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