The future of automobiles, to put it simply, is going to be based around the concept of self driving cars. Currently, every major automaker on the planet is developing their own technology for the autonomous automobile. However, few of these companies have the track record of modern technological innovation that the company of Tesla Motors has been able to display during its of existence of just over a decade. This makes Elon Musk’s technological powerhouse a natural choice to examine for how the autonomous car will begin to develop and phase into the population. Here’s several events that outline what Tesla is doing, and will start doing, to bring the concept of the autonomous car to life…
Autosteer
The reason that it is reasonable to expect Tesla to dominate the future of autonomous cars is because it has, in part, because they have already released that kind of technology. The beta test for their autonomous technology comes in the form of an autopilot system called “Autosteer.” Autosteer allows drivers to take their hands off of the steering wheel, which enables an autopilot mode in which the car will keep its course and make adjustments to avoid obstacles. What is crazy about Autosteer is that it is already compatible and available with the thousands and thousands of S and X models that are already on the market. Despite this, though, Tesla stresses that this is just a beta period, and drivers should keep their hands on their steering wheels as much as possible, at the moment. In the future though, it is likely that the steering wheel will become unnecessary.
Summon
The next step in Tesla’s autonomous technological tree is the development of a feature which was released in the 7.1 firmware called “Summon.” Summon is a big step towards driverless cars, as it enables current Tesla vehicles to self park without a driver inside. Essentially, the driver can just exit the car and tell the vehicle to park itself, which it will then carry out. This is a giant step towards Tesla being able to develop cars that won’t require drivers at all. In future versions, Tesla wishes to enable Summon to self charge and drive long distances, all without the help of a human driver.
Bold statements
On top of the technology that they have already developed, Tesla has stated that they believe that they fully expect to have a fully autonomous car on the market in 5 years. They say that these cars will be more efficient and safer than human drivers by a factor of 10. This is an incredibly bold statement, and is more ambitious than many current predictions by industry analysts. If we’ve learned anything, though, it’s not to underestimate the engineers at Tesla Motors.
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