Tesla is one of the companies that has long championed autonomous cars and has promised to have the necessary hardware installed on all their cars to make full self-driving possible. It even released this video to demonstrate the software that it is currently working on.
While the video shows a man sitting on the driver seat, it is quite clear that he is doing nothing but simply sitting there for various legal reasons. Several of the vehicle’s onboard cameras can also be seen showcasing what the vehicle is seeing and how many objects the software can detect at any given time, as well as reacting to them when necessary.
If anything, the new software is somewhere on the cautious side as seen when it inadvertently paused when it detected two women jogging on the side of the road. It’s highly unlikely that it stopped to whistle at the ladies, so it would be safe to assume that it did so because of the possibility of hitting an obstacle and to avoid such an incident.
This new version of the Tesla’s Autopilot is impressive and, with some more tweaking, could make cross-country test drives possible late next year. Alfred Bayle