CAR NAPS
Elon Musk: Teslas Will Be Fully Self-Driving By Next Year
"I am of certain of that."
Victor Tangermann3 hours ago
Full Autonomy
According to Elon Musk, Tesla’s cars are nearly ready for fully autonomous driving.
“I think we will be feature complete — full self-driving — this year,” Musk told Cathie Wood and Tasha Keeney of ARK Invest in a podcast on Tuesday. “Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year.”
Car Naps
By next year, you’ll be able to take a nap behind the wheel, Musk claimed in the same interview.
“My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination? Probably towards the end of next year,” he said.
And he’s willing to stand by his words: “I would say I am of certain of that,” he said. “That is not a question mark.”
Big Promises
Musk is no stranger to making big promises. As it stands right now, Tesla’s Autopilot can make lane changes, and navigate highway ramps — but it still can’t handle most other roads.
In October, Tesla dropped the “full self-driving” mode from the Model 3, with Musk claiming it was “causing too much confusion” in a tweet.
The race to have cars take over all driving functions is on. Alphabet’s Waymo launched a robo-taxi service in Arizona in December.
But even Waymo’s cars require human safety drivers to take control on multiple occasions throughout a single ride.
More on Tesla: Teslas Are Getting a “Party and Camping Mode”
ROAD RULES
Automakers Could Give Police Control Over Your Self-Driving Car
Police might be able to reroute cars or force them to pull over.
More Q’s Than A’s
We still have a lot of questions to answer before autonomous vehicles can go mainstream: Who’s at fault if an AV has an accident? Should people need licenses to ride in a self-driving car? How should an AV decide between running over a dog or a cat?
On Wednesday, Bloomberg published a story focused on yet another question — how should AVs interact with law enforcement? — and the solution might involving ceding control of your car to cops.
Police Power
The Bloomberg story notes the Dec. 2018 incident in which an intoxicated driver fell asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla with Autopilot engaged. The vehicle led police on a seven-minute chase down a freeway before officers were able to compel the Tesla to stop by essentially boxing it in.
This is the kind of problem AV manufactures and law enforcement want to avoid, and that could mean programming AVs to pull over as soon as they detect flashing police lights behind them, a protocol already adopted by Waymo.
Bloomberg even suggests that officers forced to exit their vehicles might be able to instruct other AVs to reroute away from an area “with a couple of taps on a handheld device.”
Driver Rights
Letting law enforcement control a car presumably owned by a citizen seems like murky legal territory.
Even if legal, it would be easy to see how some people might be opposed to police being able to give instructions to their car — especially if the car is programmed to follow police orders over that of the driver and the driver isn’t doing anything illegal.
Some critics have also noted how hackers might be able to exploit any ability for police to control AVs.
It’s still too early to say whether any of the measures proposed in the Bloombergpiece will become the standard for navigating interactions between AVs and law enforcement. But given that we could have fully autonomous vehicles as soon as next year, we have no time to waste figuring out an answer to this lingering question.
READ MORE: Someday Your Self-Driving Car Will Pull Over for Police[Bloomberg]
More on driverless cars: It Took Seven Minutes to Pull Over a Drunk and “Unresponsive” Tesla Driver
