Elon Musk first discussed the Tesla Autopilot system publicly in 2013, noting that "Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars."[17] Over the ensuing decade, Autopilot went through a series of hardware and software enhancements, gradually approaching the goal of full autonomy, which, as of January 2023[update], remains a work in progress. Autopilot, as initially introduced in 2014, referred to automatic parking and low-speed summoning on private property,[18] using sensor and computing hardware developed by Mobileye. By 2016, the Mobileye-based Autopilot had added automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and lane centering capabilities[19] when Tesla and Mobileye dissolved their partnership that July.[20] Enhanced Autopilot (EA) was announced later in 2016 as an extra-cost option that used a new hardware suite developed by Tesla;[21] the key distinguishing feature for EA, "Navigate on Autopilot", which uses the new hardware suite to guide the vehicle on controlled-access roads, from on-ramp to off-ramp, was delayed until 2018.[22] At the same time that EA was introduced, Tesla also offered Full Self-Driving (FSD) as an upgrade option to EA in 2016, which would extend machine-guided driving capabilities to local roads.[21] FSD beta testing started in October 2020.[23]
Tesla also used the term Enhanced Autopilot (EA) to refer to planned capabilities that would be coming to HW2 vehicles; the signature EA feature announced in December 2016 was "Navigate on Autopilot", which allows machine-controlled driving on controlled-access highways from on-ramp to off-ramp, including the abilities to change lanes without driver input, transition from one freeway to another, and exit.[42] HW2 vehicles were updated in January and February 2017 with software version 8.0, which included traffic-aware cruise control and autosteer (lane-centering) on divided highways and 'local roads' up to a speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h).[43][44] Software version 8.1 for HW2 arrived in March 2017, providing HW2 cars feature parity with HW1 cars, but not "Navigate on Autopilot".[45]
Sam And Max Hit The Road Deutsch Chip
In October 2016, a video entitled "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas"[58] that claimed to demonstrate Full Self-Driving, the system designed to extend automated driving to local roads, was released by Tesla,[59][60] with CEO Elon Musk tweeting a link to a longer version in November 2016;[61] the main interior camera was arranged to show the person in the driver's seat does not touch the steering wheel or pedals during the demonstration. The video also shows perspectives from the vehicle's cameras and image recognition system.[62] The title card states "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." at Musk's suggestion.[63] It was nicknamed the "Paint It Black" video, after the 1966 Rolling Stones song used as its soundtrack.[59]
Former employees who helped to produce the 2016 video were interviewed by The New York Times in 2021.[64] In the interview, they stated the vehicle was following a route that had been mapped with detailed scanning cameras, which is a technology that was and is not available in Tesla production cars. Even with these augmentations in place, the vehicle allegedly struck "a roadside barrier" on the Tesla grounds during filming, requiring repairs to the vehicle. Motor Trend and Jalopnik compared what Tesla had showcased to the deceptive video depicting a Nikola One EV truck which was actually powered by gravity;[65] Jalopnik commented "[the Tesla video] may be worse, because this video was used to deceptively suggest capabilities of a system deployed into real people's hands and used on public roads."[66] In June 2022, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software, stated the video was not intended "to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system." Elluswamy's statement was made during a deposition taken for a civil lawsuit filed against Tesla by the family of a driver that was killed in 2018 after the Model X he was driving using Autopilot crashed into a concrete barrier in Mountain View, California.[67] Contrary to the assertions in the video, human drivers had to intervene to take control, and video showing the car crashed into a fence when trying to park was deleted.[68]
At the time the "Paint it Black" video was released in 2016, FSD was acknowledged to be "some way off in the future."[42] The option to purchase the FSD upgrade to EA was removed from Tesla's website in October 2018; Elon Musk tweeted the upgrade was "causing too much confusion". Technology analyst Rob Enderle called the removal of the upgrade option "incredibly stupid", adding "don't release a system that doesn't work and make it hard to order."[69] During a January 2019 earnings call, Elon Musk reiterated "full self-driving capability is there", referring to "Navigate on Autopilot", an EA feature limited to controlled-access highways.[49] The EA option was replaced by FSD in 2019 without offering "Navigate on Autopilot"-like functionality for local roads; autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control were transferred to the basic Autopilot feature set, which was made standard on all new Teslas.[70][71]
In September 2020, Tesla reintroduced the term Enhanced Autopilot to distinguish the existing subset of features which included high-speed highway travel and low-speed parking and summoning, from FSD, which would add medium-speed city road travel.[72] Tesla released a "beta" version of its FSD software (which extended "Navigate on Autopilot"-like machine-controlled driving and navigation to 'local roads') in the United States in October 2020 to EAP testers.[10][11] The EA option tier was made available to all buyers by June 2022,[70] and the FSD beta had expanded to approximately 160,000 testers in the United States and Canada by September.[73] In November, the FSD beta was extended to all owners in North America that had purchased the option.[74]
Tesla's software has been trained based on 3 billion miles driven by Tesla vehicles on public roads, as of April 2020[update].[103][104] Alongside tens of millions of miles on public roads,[105] competitors have trained their software on tens of billions of miles in computer simulations, as of January 2020[update].[106] In terms of computing hardware, Tesla designed a self-driving computer chip that has been installed in its cars since March 2019[107] and also developed a neural network training supercomputer ("Tesla Dojo");[108][109] other vehicle automation companies such as Waymo regularly use custom chipsets and neural networks as well.[110][111]
In October 2020, Tesla first released a beta version of its FSD software to early access program testers, a small group of users in the United States.[129][10][11] Musk stated that the testing of FSD beta "[w]ill be extremely slow [and] cautious" and "be limited to a small number of people who are expert [and] careful drivers".[10] The release of the beta program renewed concern regarding whether the technology is ready for testing on public roads.[130][131] In January 2021, the number of employees and customers testing the beta FSD software was "nearly 1,000"[132] expanding in May 2021 to several thousand employees and customers.[12]
The Dojo supercomputer uses Tesla-designed D1 chips.[142] According to Tesla's senior director of Autopilot hardware, Ganesh Venkataramanan, the chip uses a "7-nanometer manufacturing process, with 362 teraflops of processing power",[143] and "Tesla places 25 of these chips onto a single 'training tile', and 120 of these tiles come together... amounting to over an exaflop [a million teraflops] of power".[143] (As of August 2021[update], Nvidia says the (non-Dojo) Tesla AI-training center uses 720 nodes of eight Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs (5,760 GPUs in total) for up to 1.8 exaflops of performance.[144]) Tesla claimed that Dojo will be the fastest AI-training computer[143] among competing offerings from Intel and Nvidia.
Tesla's Autopilot is classified as Level 2 under the SAE six levels (0 to 5) of vehicle automation.[157] At this level, the car can act autonomously, but requires the driver to monitor the driving at all times and be prepared to take control at a moment's notice.[158][159] Tesla's owner's manual states that Autopilot should not be used on city streets or on roads where traffic conditions are constantly changing;[160][161][162] however, some FSD capabilities ("traffic and stop sign control (beta)"), and future FSD capabilities ("autosteer on city streets") are advertised for city streets.[163]
Vehicles manufactured after late September 2014 are equipped with a camera mounted at the top of the windshield, forward looking radar[223][224] in the lower grille and ultrasonic acoustic location sensors in the front and rear bumpers that provide a 360-degree view around the car. The computer is the Mobileye EyeQ3.[225] This equipment allows the Tesla Model S to detect road signs, lane markings, obstacles, and other vehicles.
HW3 includes a custom Tesla-designed system on a chip fabricated using a 14 nm process by Samsung.[243] Jim Keller and Pete Bannon, among other architects, have led the project since February 2016. Tesla claimed that the new system processes 2,300 frames per second (fps), which is a 21 improvement over the 110 fps image processing capability of HW2.5.[244][245] The firm described it as a "neural network accelerator".[237] Each chip is capable of 36 trillion operations per second, and there are two chips for redundancy.[246] The company claimed that HW3 was necessary for FSD, but not for "enhanced Autopilot" functions.[247]
Drivers have been found sleeping at the wheel, driving under the influence of alcohol, and doing other inappropriate tasks with Autopilot engaged.[282][283] Initially, Tesla decided against using driver monitoring options to limit such activities.[284] It was not until late May 2021 that a new version of the OTA software turned on inside cameras for new Model 3 and Model Y (i.e. the first cars as part of the switch to Tesla Vision) to monitor drivers using Autopilot.[285] Model S and Model X cars made before 2021 do not have an inside camera and therefore physically cannot offer such capabilities, although the refreshed versions are expected to have one.[286] A review of the in-cabin camera-based monitoring system by Consumer Reports found that drivers could still use Autopilot even when looking away from the road or using their phones, and could also enable FSD beta software "with the camera covered."[287] 2ff7e9595c
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