Electrek reports that Tesla is working on engine upgrade to the Model S and Model X. The engine work is codenamed Raven. They will use permanent magnet reluctance motors like the Tesla Model 3. The improvements will likely add a few dozen additional miles of range. There is no specific target date for the upgrade, but the general expectation is for the second half of 2019.
Autopilot Software Upgrade
Tesla has upgraded the Autopilot where drivers no longer need to confirm lane changes.
There are now three options for Autopilot notifications and confirmations –
1. Enable at Start of Every Trip
Through the Enable at Start of Every Trip setting, Navigate on Autopilot can be set to automatically turn on each time a driver enters a navigation route. Once enabled, anytime a driver is on a highway and uses Autopilot with a location plugged into the navigation bar, the feature will be on by default.
2. Require Lane Change Confirmation
If a driver selects ‘No’ to Require Lane Change Confirmation, lane changes will happen automatically, without requiring a driver to confirm them first.
3. Lane Change Notification.
Drivers can elect to get notified about an upcoming lane change by receiving an audible chime as well as a default visual prompt.
SOURCES – Tesla, Electrek
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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whatever is the “permanent magnet reluctance motor” 🙂
There is also an Issue where the phone companies have dealt with a problem in a way that looks like they are causing it:
Presumably, regeneration is more efficient too, so city cycle should benefit more than highway.
The autopilot does not need to be perfect. It just needs to have fewer bugs than you do!
The reluctance motor has higher thermal efficiency, and does not have the cooling problems that inductance motors do. There are no electrical currents induced in the rotor, since it is a synchronous machine. There is simply no good way to cool a motor rotor. The higher the temperature of the rotor, the higher the electrical resistance to the induced currents of the induction motor rotor, so more heat is generated.
I blame both Microsoft, souring people to valid but buggy updates, and criminals attacking the software update supply chain, for increasingly making people afraid of updates.
Neither does Tesla. Stats show tesla autopilot 50% safer than human drivers .
Though by 2019 many people are already afraid of updating based on the effect on our computers and phones.
I agree completely with this comment.
But that level of safety is a LONG way from merely 90% correct.
I think you’ll find that most human drivers do not crash once every 11 weeks. Not counting taxi drivers of course
There seems to be a recurring pattern of autopilot going wonky then good then wonky on every release cycle. When it’s good, people are pretty satisfied, but when it’s bad, it can pull some scary situations. The weird lane drift into central highway dividers that start rising from the ground seems to suffer from this repeating release pattern. You really don’t want people getting afraid of updating though.
I guess you are the opposite of most people .
I think you are using the wrong criteria. You (and GreenPlease) are correct that self-driving cars will not be perfect. My view is that they should be accepted on the road as soon as the statistics show that allowing them on the road will reduce the overall accident rate, probably accompanied by some kind of insurance reform that does not allow an aggressive victim of an accident involving a self-driving car to treat the car manufacturer as a free money machine.
If we put off allowing self-driving once they have demonstrated that allowing them would reduce overall accident rate, or overall injury rate, or some other reasonable measure of benefit, we would be sacrificing those killed or injured by the excess accidents on an alter of innumeracy.
Gutless politician probably will not agree to accept less-than-perfect self-driving cars, so many will needlessly die, unless someone can mount a publicity campaign that sells the idea to the public that those politicians are allowing excess traffic deaths.
To be clear, I do not believe self-driving technology is ready just yet to be allowed on the road, but we cannot wait until they are perfect to allow them on the road. Even when self-driving cars are statistically better than human drivers, self-driving cars will continue to crash for a long time. Just not as often as cars with human drivers. Any flaw found when analyzing the crashes will result in a software update that eliminates that flaw from ALL the self-driving cars.
Tesla never stops innovating.
What do you think considering the fact that was the only such case? At least this bug is addressable unlike the poor driving habits of the meat brain.
There is a ton of false assumptions in your train of thought.
Been driving after the last update for 4 days now. The car makes all the decisions and lane changes, freeway changes as well as exits the freeways. I stuck a little 200gm weight to my steering wheel to spoof the sensor so it does not bug me with constant reminders to keep my hand on the wheel. In effect I already have full self driving under my supervision. Drove 30miles on freeways today without any input from me. Life is great and the future is here.
Human beings are less functional than that yet, oh horror, everyone still accepts the dumb monkeys at the wheel.
I guess the author doesn’t know the difference between and engine and a motor? Is a Tesla really powered by fossil fuel?
I just would like to know if they addressed the buggy behavior where Tesla’s will plow in to fire trucks parked in the fast lane.
Read it in Yoda’s voice and it is awesome.
The issue there is that driving is one of those things where 99.99% functional is still completely unacceptable.
With let’s say one driving decision needed every what? 10 seconds? Then my 30 minute commute to work needs 180 decisions. Getting 1/10 000 wrong means a crash every 11 weeks. I could probably do better than that drunk.
About a week ago I was just starting to turn left in a two lane turn left spot, and I noticed a car also turning left go zipping by on my left and he seemed to miss me by literally inches. I said “what the hell?” Then I noticed it was a Tesla. Almost certainly on automatic drive. Figures.
RIP sentence structure in that title
The motor upgrade should provide a nice bump to range… about 15 miles for the long range version of the Model S if my quick math is correct. If Maxwell’s claims pan out and Tesla is able to implement them we could see a Mode S with a 400 mile range in short order.
Regarding autopilot, I think it should be clear by now that vehicle autonomy follows an S-shaped curve. Getting a 90% functional system happened pretty quickly but getting that last 10% is going to take a long time and a lot of work (and possibly additional sensors).
Personally I am more interested in knowing what bugs are in Tesla’s autopilot than what the features have been added.