Tuesday 1 November 2016
Saturday 22 October 2016
Elon Musk challenges regulators to catch up to Tesla's driverless car technology
According to Elon Musk, driverless car technology is a problem that’s pretty much solved. As he’s made clear numerous times, the regulators need to catch up.
And they might want to start moving faster, because Musk isn’t slowing down.
The chief executive of electric car maker Tesla said Wednesday that all the cars the company produces going forward will be equipped with the hardware needed to transform them into self-driving cars, as soon as the software and road rules are ready.
On Thursday, the company posted a video with a Rolling Stones soundtrack that shows a Tesla Model S driving itself around highways and streets in Silicon Valley, pulling into a Tesla parking lot, searching for a spot and parking itself. It even spins its front wheels to the left so the passenger-side tire properly kisses the curb.
Musk said he aims to dispatch a driverless vehicle from Los Angeles to New York by the end of next year.
“This is going to have a big impact forcing the hands of regulators,” said Mike Ramsey of market researcher Gartner. And on other automakers, too: “If [Tesla] is successful the others will be saying ‘we are so far behind!’ ”
Automakers have said driverless cars could be ready for sale within three to five years, but Tesla appears to be moving faster.
Kelley Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer called the Tesla news “a big upfront commitment to self-driving technology that other automakers may not be willing to make at this point.”
The National Highway and Safety Administration issued loose guidelines for driverless car regulation last month, urging states and cities to coordinate new rules so a mishmash of regulations doesn’t impede the development of driverless cars. The federal government believes the technology will dramatically reduce traffic crashes and deaths.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles has produced draft regulations and is seeking public comment before they’re made final.
The automotive industry generally welcomes rules that provide certainty but opposes those that it believes will impede the progress of driverless technology.
In the U.S., the individual states set the driving rules. It’s possible, Gartner’s Ramsey said, that drivers will be able to turn tasks completely over to the robot in some states, but have to retake the wheel when the car crosses state lines.
The new Tesla hardware includes eight cameras that provide 360-degree visibility, 12 ultrasonic sensors with added sensitivity, and a forward-facing radar the company says will see through heavy rain, fog, dust “and even the car ahead.”
The newly equipped vehicles will be nearly indistinguishable from existing models and won’t look anything like the experimental driverless cars whose rooftops are loaded with obtrusive technology that makes them look like mobile radar stations. “There is nothing sticking out,” Musk told reporters. “This in no way makes the car ugly.”
The new sensor and processor package, which Musk referred to as Hardware 2, will be equipped with “a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation,” the company said.
Musk identified Nvidia as the maker of the new computer board, which will use the company’s Titan processor. Nvidia is a video game and graphics processing powerhouse that’s making a big leap into the automotive market.
Nvidia is working on demonstration projects with most major automakers and this year formed a development partnership with BMW and Israeli vision software company Mobileye.
Musk, however, said vision processing for the Hardware 2 suite is being developed in-house at Tesla. Tesla and Mobileye were once partners but ended their relationship in July.
Current Tesla owners won’t be able to upgrade to the new driverless hardware. “It’s not realistic,” Musk said. “It would be like giving the cars a spinal cord transplant.”
The new package, he said, will add $8,000 to the cost of each car, although how that will affect consumer pricing is yet to be determined. The current hardware suite adds $3,000 in cost, he said.
Although the cars won’t make full use of the new hardware for some time, Musk said it won’t sit there useless. It will add capabilities to the company’s existing Autopilot driver-assist technology, including lane keeping and collision avoidance.
Driverless software will operate in “shadow” mode behind the scenes, to be used by Tesla’s software developers to perfect autonomous technology.
The company’s cars are connected to a cloud computing system that Tesla takes feedback from the cars and sends back improved software. The company calls it “fleet learning.”
The upgrade adds yet another project to Musk’s ever-rising stack of ambitions.
He’s already producing two cars at Tesla, models S and X, and delivered 50,000 of them last year. By the end of 2017, if Musk’s schedule is met, the first Model 3 mid-market sedan will pop off the assembly line. Musk has vowed to pump out 500,000 vehicles in 2018.
He’s intent on creating an alternative energy powerhouse. Tesla already makes car batteries and Powerwall-brand home storage batteries. The company is constructing a gigantic $5-billion structure it calls the Gigafactory outside Reno to turn out batteries in large numbers, and opened a piece of it over the summer.
The alternative-energy plan depends on completing a $2.3-billion stock deal that would fold solar energy company SolarCity into Tesla. Musk is the largest shareholder at each company. The other shareholders are set to vote on the deal in November.
And, of course, Musk’s ambitions extend beyond Earth. His Hawthorne-based rocket-and-capsule company, SpaceX, launches satellites and cargo, with future plans to carry humans to the International Space Station in a contract with NASA. Eventually, Musk plans to colonize Mars.
russ.mitchell@latimes.com
ALSO
Driverless-car makers worry that California's proposed rules will slow their progress
New Teslas will have all the hardware to be driverless cars, Elon Musk says
Elon Musk says all Teslas will now be built to be fully self-driving
All Teslas will now be manufactured with hardware that will enable the vehicle to completely drive itself in all situations, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday.
That means when Tesla’s fully self-driving software is ready, all it will take is an over-the-air update to turn semi-autonomous Teslas (already in production) into fully autonomous cars.
Model X and Model S vehicles currently in production will have a lot more cameras, sensors and radars to enable full autonomy. Specifically, the sensor suite, which Musk called “hardware 2,” will include eight 360-degree cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars and a forward-facing radar.
Compare that to the old hardware suite, which only included one forward-facing camera and radars and sonars with half the resolution of the new radars.
The cars will also be equipped with new software that is 40 times more powerful than the existing software to better process information from the radars, sonars and cameras, according to the company.
“The [existing] autopilot will continue to improve with fleet learning,” Musk said on a call with journalists. “But it is limited by the fundamental hardware that is on the hardware 1 cars ... They have half the range and resolution.”
But consumers won’t get fully self-driving tech overnight. Instead, as Tesla has done with its semi-autonomous Autopilot feature, the company will be rolling out new autonomous features every two to three months, Musk said. Even when all the software’s capabilities aren’t yet active, it will be operating in what Musk called “shadow mode.”
While Autopilot has come under fire recently after a number of drivers operating the feature were involved in accidents, Musk continues to contend that any level of autonomous technology is safer than manually driven cars.
“There are many more minor accidents and serious accidents than there are fatalities. That provides a much richer statistical sample set for comparing the relative safety of autonomy versus not-autonomy,” Musk said. “We see significantly better [results] with autonomy than without. That just gets better over time as the system is further refined.”
Musk, not one to mince words, also said that anyone who discourages the use of autonomous technology is in fact committing murder:
"If you're writing an article that's negative that essentially dissuades people from using [autonomous tech], you're killing people.”
It’s not the first time Musk has criticized those who question the safety of semi-autonomous technology. In another call with reporters, the Tesla CEO said of other automakers, “I think it would be morally wrong to withhold functionalities that improve safety simply in order to avoid criticisms or for fear of being involved in lawsuits.”
The industry has long debated whether semi-autonomous technology is safe. Opponents argue that because it requires a human to pay attention and occasionally engage with the system it also welcomes human error in a way that fully self-driving vehicles would not.
But proponents of semi-autonomous tech, like Musk, argue that it would be irresponsible not to reap the safety benefits of autonomous technology at all levels.
Read more on this topic here: After a fatal Tesla crash, the debate over the safety of semi-autonomous technology continues
Friday 7 October 2016
BOEING SAYS "WE WILL BEAT ELON MUSK TO MARS"
"I'm convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket," he told an innovation conference in Chicago.
His comments come a week after Musk set out his own plans to colonize Mars. The SpaceX CEO has said he wants to send humans to the planet in 2024, with the spacecraft touching down in 2025.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Muilenburg believes Boeing can get there sooner or just expects Musk to miss his targets.
The SpaceX CEO, who also runs Tesla Motors (TSLA), admits he's sometimes overoptimistic with his deadlines. "I'm not the best at this sort of thing," Musk said last week at a meeting of space exploration associations in Mexico.
Boeing is developing a rocket for NASA known as the Space Launch System, which the space agency plans to use to go to Mars by the 2030s.
Musk said last week that SpaceX had successfully tested a new rocket engine it plans to use to take people to the planet within the next 10 years.
Besides Mars, Muilenburg also talked about other ambitious ideas at the Chicago conference, like hypersonic travel that would take people "anywhere in the world in a couple of hours."
"Over the last 100 years ... men and women went from walking on the Earth to walking on the Moon," he said. "But when I look ahead to the next century, I think the opportunity for innovation and big change is even greater."
Boeing and SpaceX are already competing to be the first private company to carry U.S. astronauts into space. Both already have contracts with NASA to take astronauts to the International Space Station.
SpaceX appeared to have gained an edge in May when Boeing said it had pushed the date of its first manned space mission back to 2018 from 2017.
But Musk's firm suffered a setback on Sept. 1 when one of its rockets was destroyed in an explosion on the launch pad. The company is still trying to figure out what caused the fiery blast, but it's planning to return to space as soon as November.
Monday 3 October 2016
Elon Musk elaborates on his A.I. concerns
Overview:
00:00. Five biggest problems to tackle
05:00. How to be useful
08:02. Overcoming fear
09:42. Colonising Mars
11:04. AI concerns explains
14:55. Open AI status
15:58. Time allocation
18:11. Manufacturing
Date: September 15, 2016
Elon was 45 years old
Elon Musk: How I Became The Real 'Iron Man'
Elon Musk: How I Became The Real 'Iron Man'
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- "Bloomberg Risk Takers" profiles Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who helped create PayPal, built America's first viable fully electric car company, started the nation's biggest solar energy supplier, and may make commercial space travel a reality in our lifetime. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Elon Musk Debuts the Tesla Powerwall
Elon Musk Debuts the Tesla Powerwall
Tesla Powerwall Keynote by Elon Musk "The
Missing Piece"
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