Tesla’s Second Generation Autopilot Could Reduce Crash Rate by 90%, Says CEO Elon Musk
January 21st, 2017Whatever you think about autonomous drive technologies, my point with posting these stories is not to be a cheerleader one way or another. I just want to be sure everyone knows that this stuff is real and it is coming.
Millions of drivers will lose their jobs, and these are not minimum wage, burger flipping jobs:
Carmaking giants and ride-sharing upstarts racing to put autonomous vehicles on the road are dead set on replacing drivers, and that includes truckers. Trucks without human hands at the wheel could be on American roads within a decade, say analysts and industry executives.
At risk is one of the most common jobs in many states, and one of the last remaining careers that offer middle-class pay to those without a college degree. There are 1.7 million truckers in America, and another 1.7 million drivers of taxis, buses and delivery vehicles. That compares with 4.1 million construction workers.
While factory jobs have gushed out of the country over the last decade, trucking has grown and pay has risen. Truckers make $42,500 per year on average, putting them firmly in the middle class.
There are lots of implications besides jobs (convenience, safety, surveillance, police state control/remote kill switch, etc), but my guess is that the jobs issue is the elephant in the room.
Via: Electrek:
Following the release of data from the first year of Tesla’s first generation Autopilot and the revelation that it reduced the crash rate of its vehicles by about 40%, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the Autopilot team aims for the second generation hardware to reduce the crash rate by 90%.
If achieved, it would mean that all of Tesla’s vehicles produced since October 2016 would crash on average only once for every ten crashes by vehicles without the advanced driver assist system.
That’s 1.3 crash per million miles before Autopilot’s Autosteer feature down to 0.8 crash per million miles after Autosteer – a 40% reduction in crash rate verified by NHTSA – and now they are aiming for 0.1 crash per million miles after the introduction of what the company has been calling ‘Enhanced Autosteer’ with Tesla’s second generation Autopilot hardware.
