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All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

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Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#51
post #3

How sure are they that this hardware revision is going to be what is required? I feel like at any point in time you can make an assumption about the hardware requirements to only discover in future that you could have actually done it with just a software update if the CPU had one more core. They'd have to be pretty sure this HW rev would meet their future demands for self-driving right ?

I assume they're reasonably confident, since they've been doing this for a while, and have ploughed more money/time into this than most others.

That, and judging by Tesla's history - if there was indeed something lacking, they might just retro-fit it for free onto people's cars. So I assume they're keen on getting this right...haha.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#52
Are the cars going to look like Google's and Uber's self driving cars, then?

I never cared that much about self driving capabilities - I like to drive myself - and I certainly don't want to shell out $35,000 for a car with what looks like a food processor or a police emergency light mounted on the rooftop.

IMHO, one of the best features of Tesla has been that they actually made EVs look like traditional cars. It might seem trivial, but many of the budding competitors still fail to do just that:

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/17/vw-300-mile-ev-paris-auto...

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/design/commer...

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#53

Who's providing all this hardware? EIGHT surround cameras and TWELVE ultrasonic sensors: Are they building this in house too? If not, that's a lot of business to a supplier... all I could find about camera suppliers for Tesla was their former camera (tech?) supplier Mobileye.

EDIT: Ignore the first paragraph below; @dyarosia mentioned correctly they're working on their own vision system, so they probably buy generic camera units.

(IGNORE THIS: The surround cameras are likely still in collaboration with Mobileye, since in their case, Mobileye doesn't just give the camera hardware but also has a fair bit of software that makes all the cameras come together. It's not too likely Tesla's duplicated this so quickly.)

Ultrasonic sensors though are dirt cheap (in the few dollars range), and they probably come from one of the many tier 1 suppliers (Bosch, Delphi, etc) that makes them. These are the technology that powered those beeping back distance sensors for 10+ years.

The real news here is that again, LiDAR is absent. It seems like Tesla's pretty confident they can get to full autonomous self driving without the point cloud data that LiDAR provides. Now THAT'D be impressive!

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#55

> Teslas with 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. Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners now, but expected to get much more later? I can't think of a prece…

Happens quite often. Hardware is updated but software is not ready. Similar approach happens with digital cameras, graphics cards, electronics equipment.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#56
post #6

So self-driving will be a standard feature of Model 3, not an option? Pretty cool if they can make it work. I'm skeptical that the computer (NVIDIA Drive PX 2 perhaps?) will have enough power to do it all without LIDAR.

Self-driving hardware will be standard on Model 3, but you'll likely still have to pay a premium for the software to activate it. This is akin to Tesla including the 75 kWh battery on the 60 kWh Model S, and then charging you extra to "activate" the battery's full capacity.

I mean, it's a smart business move.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#57

> Teslas with 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. Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners now, but expected to get much more later? I can't think of a prece…

I'm totally just guessing, but possibly they still need training data for the new hardware configuration which they will collect from the newly sold cars. They could pay testers to drive them around for a while to generate that data or just roll it out to the public and crowd source the problem. They deliver less functionality at launch but start generating revenue earlier. Most large car companies don't mind deferring the revenue a little after incurring the initial development costs if it means delivering a complete product, but Tesla is operating on tighter margins than big auto.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#59

Who's providing all this hardware? EIGHT surround cameras and TWELVE ultrasonic sensors: Are they building this in house too? If not, that's a lot of business to a supplier... all I could find about camera suppliers for Tesla was their former camera (tech?) supplier Mobileye.

The ultrasonic sensors and radar are Bosch.

Not sure about the cameras, but perhaps the same.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'll be an interesting court case: the first time a fatality is the result of unactivated safety features on a car that's fully capable of preventing a collision.

Tesla has already said that the Model 3's safety features will come standard, though it wouldn't preclude such a lawsuit against the owner if the features weren't activated.

That makes no sense at all.

Say Tesla's car could automatically brake if it sees a hazard in front of you. However, you opted out of that optional extra.

You aren't paying attention whilst driving, and hit somebody. Who's fault is it?

Yours for being cheap and an inattentive driver? Or Tesla's for not forcing you to give them money to pay for a feature you clearly didn't want?

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