After keeping the world in suspense for a few days, Elon Musk has finally made his latest announcement: all Tesla vehicles produced from now on will be fitted with the hardware needed for full self-driving capability – including the upcoming Model 3.
“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,” the California-based automaker said in a statement.
So, how will it work? Well, eight “surround cameras” provide 360-degree visibility around the car (with up to 250 metres of range), while twelve “updated ultrasonic sensors” complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of Tesla’s earlier system.
Meanwhile, a forward-facing radar “with enhanced processing” ability provides additional data about the surroundings on a redundant wavelength, which Tesla says makes its cars capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.
To process 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,” said Tesla.
Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, Tesla says it will further calibrate the system “using millions of miles of real-world driving” to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience. That, interestingly, will have a consequence for new buyers of the Model S, Models X and eventually Model 3.
You see, while this is occurring, Tesla models with the 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 breaking, 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,” the automaker concluded.
Musk and Tesla believe that 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.
