Tesla Autopilot 2.0 Is Coming This Year, Source Confirms (technobuffalo.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechnoBuffalo: A source close to Tesla Motors confirmed to TechnoBuffalo that Tesla Autopilot 2.0 is coming soon. Other media outlets like Teslarati have reported on prototype Model S and Model X vehicles operating in the wild sporting two forward facing cameras, which may indicate part of the new hardware necessary to take advantage of Autopilot 2.0's additional features. "The dual camera system is capable of recognizing and reacting to stop signs and traffic lights with no driver input," said the source. The current Autopilot software cannot simply stop itself at a light or a stop sign on its own -- it needs a car in front of it in order to automatically slow down or stop. The added cameras should help Autopilot 2.0 read and react to traffic lights and stop signs, and thus bring Tesla's cars closer to autonomous driving. The source did mention that Tesla's current test vehicles with Autopilot 2.0 are running "very beta" software that was likely the precursor to v8.0. U.S. regulators are actively investigating 25,000 Tesla Model S cars after a fatal crash involving a vehicle using the "Autopilot" mode was reported. Despite the tragedy, Elon Musk recently said that Autopilot could save half a million lives every year if Tesla Autopilot was universally available.

Comments

Re:Why is Slashdot pushing this story so hard?

[smooth wombat]

From the article:

"I definitely forsee a future like this," Kowslowski said. "Driving manually doesn't make a whole lot of sense. People used to wash clothes by hand. But if you did it today, people would think you're crazy."

That's because Kowslowski is too slow to think that maybe not everyone wants to be coddled by software. Just because he's too lazy (or incompetent) to drive a manual vehicle doesn't mean everyone else is the same.

Driving manual makes far more sense than letting software decide what gear to be in (usually the wrong one). One has far greater control with a manual car than an automatic for several reasons, not the least of which one has to think how to drive with a manual, unlike with an automatic where one presses a pedal.

As to washing clothes by hand, funny, there are daily articles on why washing clothes by hand is far more beneficial than letting a machine, run by software, do the same thing. As any woman if she'd rather wash her more delicate clothes by hand or take a chance on having them torn to shreds in a washing machine.

And no, I don't care that he's a VP at Gartner. He's still an idiot for suggesting people become even less capable drivers and relying on software created by other people to think for them.