This Hyperloop Lawsuit Is Insane 💨🚝  July 15th 2016

Leave Tesla Alone

Elon Musk tweeted this article and said "We don't mind taking the heat for customer safety. It is the right thing to do."

The conditions under which Autopilot, Tesla's semiautonomous driving feature, will operate are, by definition, some of the safest and most predictable situations possible. Heavy rain, icy roads, limited visibility, the Tail of the Dragon—all places where Autopilot will cheerfully hand the wheel back over to you, the Tesla owner, and wish you good luck.

But what you cannot argue is the fact that the safety record of Autopilot is at least in the same ballpark with that of human drivers on the highway. Stop and think about that for a moment. It's possible to walk into a dealership and buy a car that drives itself on the freeway about as safely as you would if you were driving the thing. That car also doesn't use gasoline. And it's as fast in the quarter-mile as a Corvette Stingray. The future is here, as William Gibson once said; it's just unevenly distributed.

In any even remotely sane universe, this achievement would be celebrated in the most hyperbolic fashion possible by every man, woman, and child on the planet. Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War. The entire auto industry would be working night and day to make a car that could beat Tesla at its own game. Kids on their bicycles would pretend to be a Tesla P90D in Ludicrous Mode.

It is a towering achievement brought to us by people who really do care about making the future happen in the real world instead of on a phone screen.

Read the full article | Photo from Tesla

Elon Musk announces ‘moderate to big’ improvements for Autopilot on current hardware

The limits of the Autopilot under its current suite of sensors have been debated for a while, especially since Tesla has been discussing an upcoming second-generation hardware for the program to allow fully autonomous driving.

But last night, Elon Musk announced that “certainly moderate and maybe big advances” are possible with Tesla’s current sensors. It means that Tesla still sees potential for significant improvements on the software side for the current version of the Autopilot, which is enabled by a front-facing camera, a front-facing radar, and 360 ultrasonic sensors.

Elon’s comment about decoupling the radar from the camera is interesting here, especially since it is understood that several Autopilot features already work decoupled from the camera. Tesla owners have driven with the Model S with the front-facing camera covered and since the Autosteer feature is mainly based on the GPS and high-resolution mapping inputs with the addition of radar if there’s a vehicle in front to track, the vehicle can still perform fairly well without it, but the camera is particularly useful to detect the lines on the road.

Read the full article | Photo from @elonmusk

Tesla launches a 60 kWh – $74,000 version of the Model X with software-limited battery

Today, Tesla reduced the entry price for its all-electric SUV, the Model X, by $9,000 with a new option for a 75 kWh battery pack software-limited to 60 kWh. The news follows the introduction of the same concept in the Model S lineup last month when Tesla announced the Model S 60 starting at $66,000.

As for the Model X, the base version still retains its dual motor platform and therefore, it will have a Model X 60D badge. Owners will have the option to unlock the remaining 15 kWh of energy capacity in the battery pack after the purchase for a $9,000 fee or order the vehicle as a Model X 75D for $83,000, as it was the case before today.

For the $9,000 price drop, you lose 37 miles of range off the Model X 75’s 237 miles for a total of 200 miles of range on a single charge for the new Model X 60D. The new variant has the same performance as the 75D version with a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 6 seconds and a top speed of 130 mph.

Read the full article

Autopilot wasn’t on during Model X crash in PA and Musk says it would have prevented accident

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a statement last week confirming that it will investigate the recent Tesla Model X rollover accident in Pennsylvania after the driver claimed that the Autopilot was activated during the crash. Last week, Tesla said that they couldn’t access the data logs remotely because of the damage on the vehicle, but a spokesperson also said that they “have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident”.

Now apparently Tesla managed to access the logs (they can be downloaded directly in the vehicle) and CEO Elon Musk says that the Autopilot was actually turned off during the crash which happened on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on July 1st – the day after NHTSA announced a probe of the Autopilot following a fatal accident in Florida. Musk went as far as saying that if the Autopilot would have been on before the crash, it could have prevented it.

Read the full article | Photo from @elonmusk