TESLA Builds Fully Self-Driving Cars
Tesla is now venturing into another car of the future as it recently announced its plans to develop fully self-driving cars.
In a conference call Wednesday night, Elon Musk announced that Tesla expects that by the end of 2017, one of its cars will be able to drive from New York City to Los Angeles without the driver having to do anything.
And customers don’t need to wait that long because starting next week, Tesla cars will be built with more cameras, giving computers a full 360 degree view around the car.
Although these cars are not that smart yet, Tesla assures they will learn fast.
A Supercomputer in Car
According to Elon Musk, the self-driving cars will be equipped with a supercomputer with eight cameras (not the standard four), ultrasonic sensors, radar. The supercomputer is capable of processing data 40 times faster than previous models.
Aside from that, Tesla wants its self-driving technology to be twice as safe as a human driver. In fact, Tesla wants their cars to be 10 times safer than the average human driver.
Tesla says this enables full self-driving in “almost all circumstances, at what we believe will be a probability of safety at least twice as good as the average human driver.”
The Upgrading
Upgrading of Tesla cars to become autonomous will not be possible for older cars. Full self-driving will only be available to owners of new Model S, Model X and, eventually, Model 3 cars.
“Upgrading cars is not realistic,” Musk said. “It’s like giving cars a spinal cord transplant.”
The upgrading will demand some hard work as well. Tesla said it will validate them through millions of miles of real-world testing. In this way, the computer software will be tested to see if it is better than a human driver at avoiding accidents and crashes.
Tesla customers will be able to order “Full Self-Driving Capability,” when they buy a new car. The self-driving package costs $8,000.
