It was an embarrassing situation for Tesla Motors when they began introducing their self – driving cars to the public more than a year ago. The company justifies that the move was just a test run for the autopilot system. However, several unpleasant circumstances had been reported involving the Tesla self-driving car. There were car accidents here and there where one customer had even died while riding on the Tesla on autopilot. Tesla recalls its claim on being leaders in the self – driving technology and reassures its customers that the autopilot feature is simply an automated driver assistant.
Knowing all these negative new, one can expect to have a more discipline Tesla who will be more careful with their next development. However, Tesla had already launched its latest innovation in a certain event within the week. The Tesla Autopilot 2.0 warrants that all their new cars will have this hardware that able to provide the highest quality of automatic driving.
Proving the capability of its hardware, Tesla showed a video of one of its self-driving car steering arounds its base which is near Stanford University. The video may seem enticing but it doesn’t offer sufficient proof the system is ready to face the challenges which are keeping other car manufacturers pursuing their own autonomous cars. The roads at the university campus in Stanford is an easy obstacle to overcome. Hence, the video could not guarantee the quality of Tesla cars.
Several feature upgrades had been made on Tesla cars. Two of these are eight cameras that enable the car to get a 360-degree view of the things around it and some ultrasonic sensors. However, some non-partisan researchers as well as experts from competitors say that the Tesla system still does not enough autonomous driving capabilities that would earn it the highest rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The only useful advancement to the Tesla car is that the company is now able to gather good and useful information from its vehicles which are now running on the streets. It had acquired the unsurpassable ability to abide with new regulations on autonomous driving. While its competitors use only a small number of test cars, Tesla is making all its cars do the work of testing itself and providing them with the information to improve its quality. This is indeed a promising development for Tesla’s autopilot system.
But Tesla wants to go beyond making the autopilot system to be known as a mere enhancement on an automobile. It was proud to present its new hardware in some launch events as a fully self-steering mechanism. The company boasts that the system gives the car the ability to drive across the country without human intervention. It had also indicated that they will make these cars available for rental as self – driving taxis.
The company had indeed extremely sensationalized their launching of the new autonomous hardware that their claim for the need for approval from the transportation regulatory board had been left almost unnoticed. The company’s founder had apologized for his shortcomings on this matter.
Criticisms are never alien to our society. Everyone has the right to make their own judgement and Tesla is not immune to this predicament. Nevertheless, the company still is all geared up to set the stage on this autonomous driving technology.
