The head of Tesla is confident that by the end of this year the company will have a fully self-driving car. Here are just the commercial prospects of such a car so far are very vague.
In February last year, Elon Musk promised by the end of 2020 to show the world a fully functional drone that does not require any human intervention in control.
This week, Musk himself recalled his promise in a video message dedicated to the opening of the next World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Shanghai, and stated literally the following (translation of a quote from Reuters):
“I am absolutely convinced that level 5 or, in fact, complete autonomy will appear, and I think that will appear very soon. I’m still confident that the basic functions of the Level 5 autopilot will be ready by the end of this year. ”
What is meant by “basic functions” is not entirely clear, because, according to the SAE classification, a level 5 autopilot does everything himself and does not require human intervention even in difficult conditions (for example, in bad weather or on a bad road).
Level 4 is the ability to leave the driver’s seat and go to bed in a traveling car, but in difficult situations, such an autopilot stops working and stops the car so that the driver, as he wakes up, will taxi. Tesla between the two poles of the epidemic: China supports, the US scolds
Level 3 implies the ability to let go of the steering wheel, distract from the road and go about their business (watch a video, read a book, do work, etc.), but you cannot leave the driver’s seat and you must be prepared at any time to quickly take control. Level 3 autopilot, by the way, has the current fourth generation Audi A8 in the database, only it does not work and will never work due to the unavailability of the regulatory framework, which we discussed in detail in a separate article.
The current Tesla assisting autopilot, which regularly gets into accidents, is the 2nd level of autonomy at which the car drives itself, but the driver must constantly monitor the road and instantly adjust the autopilot’s actions if something goes wrong. Many Tesla owners ignore this rule, are distracted and even sleep at the wheel, so that, in fact, they themselves are to blame for the fact that they get into an accident. Note that Tesla requires drivers of their cars to keep their hands on the steering wheel, while 2-level autopilots from Ford, GM and Nissan allow you to lower your hands and remove your feet from the pedals, but the driver’s alertness is controlled by a special salon camera, and if the driver does not monitor dear, the autopilot turns off.
Thus, it turns out that Ilon Max wants to jump from level 2 to level 5 at once, which suggests that he, apparently, is not very well versed in the SAE classification, because the “basic functions” of a level 5 autopilot are real at best 3rd level. And even level 3 cannot be legally used on public roads, since there are no laws that allow transferring responsibility for safety when driving from a person to a car or its manufacturer, and the development of such laws rests on insoluble ethical contradictions.
That is, by the end of the year, Tesla will most likely show us a full-fledged drone (Mask even promises powerful processors with an advanced cooling system for it), but you will not be able to ride it.
In addition to Tesla, General Motors also recently promised a full-fledged autopilot, but without specific deadlines, but BMW and Daimler froze their joint unmanned program as having no visible commercial prospects – they say, the time of full-fledged drones has not come yet.