San Francisco, May 8 (IANS)| Despite Elon Musk’s tall claims on Twitter about entirely self-driving technology, electric car maker Tesla has privately admitted that such claims do not match engineering reality.
Tesla vehicles are far from reaching the level of autonomy often described by Musk on social media, according to an internal memo obtained by transparency portal PlainSight. Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Software CJ Moore told the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) “According to CJ, Allen’s tweet does not match the engineering reality. Tesla is currently on another level.”
Level 2 technology refers to a semi-automatic driving system that requires supervision by a human driver. The memo revealed that “Musk has enhanced the capabilities of the Autopilot Advanced Driver Assistance System in Tesla vehicles, as well as the company’s ability to deliver fully autonomous features by the end of the year,” TechCrunch reports.
Tesla vehicles come with a driver assistance system called ‘Autopilot’ which increases the safety and convenience behind the wheel. When used properly, autopilot reduces your overall workload as a driver. For an additional 10,000, people can buy “full self-driving,” or FSD, which Musk promises will deliver full autonomous driving capabilities. Full self-driving capabilities include autopilot, auto lane change, navigating on summon (moving your car in and out of a tight space using a mobile app or key).
Smart summon (your car will navigate more complex environments and parking spaces) traffic and stop sign control (beta) and autosteer on city streets (upcoming). However, Tesla vehicles are still not driving on their own and are “far from reaching that level of autonomy.”
In a January call, Musk told investors he was “very confident that the car would be able to drive itself with more reliability than a human this year.” Tesla, however, is unlikely to achieve Level 5 (L5) autonomy, in which its cars can drive themselves without human supervision by the end of 2021.
According to the DMV memo “the ratio of driver interactions to driver interactions must be in the magnitude of 1 or 2 million miles to move into higher levels of automation. Tesla indicated that Allen on the rates of improvement when speaking about L5 capabilities.” Extrapolating. Tesla is yet to say whether the rate of improvement will carry the L5 to the end of the calendar year.”