BY KEVIN SAWYER – Tesla announced this week that all of its self driving vehicles have been loaded with the final hardware needed for them to be fully functional self driving vehicles. The new cars contain 12 ultra sonic sensors as well as 8 cameras that can see a complete 360 degrees. They will also be outfitted with a new radar system that is loaded up front to assist with navigation during changing weather conditions.
When a buyer goes to pick up their new Tesla Model X, a team of technicians will fully calibrate your vehicle before it will be fully autonomous. They will run it through millions of miles of driving simulations and conditions to try and ensure the car will be able to handle all type of driving hazards and conditions.
The one drawback for the new vehicles, Tesla states, is that they new cars will not have some of the features currently included in other Tesla vehicles. These things include automatic emergency braking, cruise control, lane holding and collision warning. These will be loaded on eventually after Tesla engineers have had time to fully test these options on the self driving vehicles.
The driving software will automatically be updated as time passes. Critics claim that the new system isn’t ready and as functional as the company believes so Tesla may end up delaying the roll out and sale of the vehicles. Elon Musk, the company’s founder, stated in a press conference that the systems have been rigorously tested and that the media had been concentrating far too much on the few crashes that have happened during live testing phases.
Musk declares that the current computer system in the vehicles are ten times more powerful than the previous ones they had and that he was fully confident that these new vehicles were ready for sale and for the challenges of the road.
PHOTO CREDIT: Tesla