A growing body of evidence makes clear that many drivers are confused about what the car can and can’t do. But once the early production bugs are ironed out, the Model 3 feels like it's going to be a great everyday car. Leslie Stahl asked Elon Musk on Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes, as the scene showed her riding on the freeway with Musk in a red Tesla Model 3.
No small mission.
Not all of us have been software engineers, but we’ve all played team sports at some point. But her questioning, trying to gauge Musk’s involvement in the driving process, highlights a significant issue Tesla faces as it rolls out ever more advanced Autopilot features.
Ironically, part of the problem is the high quality of Tesla’s software. The combination of those two moments struck me — this is a massive team with several directors in charge of different parts of the Autopilot system, and Elon is quite closely involved with every aspect of Autopilot development. Tesla has been adding abilities steadily via over-the-air software updates, telling its customers these features are in beta, and letting them have at it. Tesla has published our second annual Impact Report, which measures the impact our products and operations have on the environment and our communities. I interviewed at Tesla (Palo Alto, CA) in May 2014. Even this highlight, though, doesn’t capture the full scale of the effort.
They seem to flow out of a Tesla like, Kyle Field recently published an article about the kind of “, ” Tesla has taken to advance its computer vision and self-driving capabilities. "Do you feel safe?"
Ironically, part of the problem is the high quality of Tesla’s software. Outfits like Waymo and GM’s Cruise are going straight for a fully autonomous system, testing their tech with trained safety drivers in carefully prescribed situations. As a followup to that, I had a short chat with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the breadth and diversity of Tesla’s Autopilot team. Eventually, the goal is for it to move in a smooth, safe, elegant way everywhere that a car can drive. It is extremely important to emphasize that Tesla Autopilot is the work of 300 super talented engineers, How many Tesla engineers does it take to make your car drive itself? But I know from experience with previous versions of Autopilot that such vigilance wears off quickly. Got an email from the HR person saying they liked my work and are interested in talking .
That’s just 5 people throwing a ball around and trying to get it in a hoop*. There’s one more thing to consider, though.
Getting a computer to drive a car is easy. We didn’t discuss it nearly as much, as it came at the end of the second chat, but stay tuned for a piece on that if you want to get a little more insight into what Elon Musk considers to be a rather big deal.
(*Okay, I’ve played a lot of basketball and I know that minimizing the skill of good basketball players and using the term “just” is not the perfect comparison. The information provided is from their perspective.
Tesla Model 3 With New LFP Battery Now Supercharges Even Faster? Getting a computer to drive a car on roads shared with humans is quite difficult. Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. The process took 4+ weeks.
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“We are expanding to 1000 highly skilled labelers. In our discussions, Elon emphasized at least a few times that credit for how amazing Autopilot is and will become goes to hundreds of extremely talented people. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Appreciate CleanTechnica’s originality? Wow, 500 labelers on top of 300 Jedi engineers! What I got was a little bit of perspective on how large and varied the Autopilot team is. How many Tesla engineers does it take to make your car drive itself? As we chatted a bit about the software team, it became clear that these ~200 software engineers could probably get a job anywhere they wanted.
Would you like us to review something? When the car drives so capably, it’s easy to be lulled into a sense that the computer doesn’t need any help or supervision.
That’s a lot of operations. One may ask, “Well, how much is Elon involved, really?