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The cars are loaded at a Tesla charging station in Arlington, Virginia, on August 13, 2021.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images
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Tesla
a car with automatic driving functions was caught on a cruise patrolled by state highways in Florida over the weekend.
The 2019 Model 3 driver told officers the electric vehicle’s autopilot system was in operation when it attacked the cruiser and a Mercedes SUV the soldier was helping. No one was injured.
Tesla shares (ticker: TSLA) ended with the crash. Shares closed up 2.7% on Monday. The S&P 500 rose 0.4%. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.2%.
But the accident highlights the difficulty of achieving autonomous driving. And the quality of the driving functions may depend on the geography and the familiarity of the car with the geography.
Stock market gains show investors are being drawn to the guilty falls of autonomous driving technology.
The Tesla touch fell more than 3% after it was reported that no one was behind the wheel of a Tesla involved in a fatal crash in Texas, but that it recovered in a few days. It turned out that Tesla’s automatic driving features were not activated.
Shares also reacted negatively to two other safety stories, which fell 4.3% on August 16 after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it was investigating 11 crashes related to the road safety system. Tesla driver assistance autopilot. Shares fell another 3% a day later, after two senators sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to examine Tesla’s market promises about its driver assistance functions.
The fall, however, was short-lived. Shares closed at $ 665.71 that day, Aug. 17. They closed at $ 730.91 on Monday.
Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have consistently pointed out that Tesla’s automatic driving features make cars safer, even if the systems aren’t perfect. Tesla did not respond to any requests for comment on the Florida crash.
The quality of autonomous driving depends on the familiarity of the system with local roads. Functions must learn local conditions, just like human drivers.
During Tesla’s artificial intelligence day, which was held to demonstrate Tesla’s automatic intelligence and driving technologies, Musk told his audience that the electric vehicle manufacturer is shaping its systems. self-driving in data from 50 countries. “As we try to move forward in full autonomous driving, we needed to choose a country,” Musk added. “The roads are a little different in Canada … quite different.” The training process for local conditions takes time.
Autonomous technology company Waymo operates autonomous taxis in Phoenix and is testing cars in San Francisco. Achieving automatic driving in one city does not mean that these cars can do everything in another city.
All systems available to consumers qualify as so-called level 2 systems, which means drivers have to pay attention 100% of the time. Level 3 systems mean that drivers can break away from their focus in limited circumstances; these systems are not yet for sale.
Waymo robotaxis are level 4 autonomous vehicles. In a given area, such as a well-mapped city, the car can do it all. There are no level 5 systems yet. Level 5 means the car can be driven anywhere and in all conditions.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]