Tesla cars
Self-Driving
If there is one feature from Tesla that makes it more advanced than most other cars on the road, it would be its self-driving technology. As well as having a very reliable Autopilot feature which has now been built into all of Tesla cars’ software after 2014 , they are also making huge strides in the race towards fully autonomous car technology for the near future.
Autopilot
First, looking at the autopilot feature it seems it is already advanced and reliable technology in heavy commercial use at just over a million cars on the road (using autopilot) as of October 2020 according to EV source ( Tesla vs Top 5 Autonomous Vehicle Companies , 2020). Although the feature requires active driver supervision, autopilot has many great features which ‘assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving’ ( Future of Driving , 2021). This most importantly includes automatic steering, acceleration and braking within its lane. With its vision-based system it can run smoothly on roads that it has never been on before, even on more challenging environments like construction sites. It can change lanes automatically once someone has made an indication as well as park itself. It even has a feature called ‘Summon’ which allows the owner to press a button from up to 200 feet away and the car will navigate itself to them (Hawkins, 2019). How is all this done? According to Vision ( How Does Tesla's Autopilot Work ? 2021) , ‘at the most basic level, visual feedback is fed into the system by Tesla’s 8 onboard cameras’. There are three cameras on the windscreen, and all have slightly different features. The first is the wide camera which can view 60m ahead and can see up to 120 degrees allowing for reliable close-range vision. Tesla claims that it is best in an urban environment for low-speed situations ( Future of Driving , 2021). Another is the main camera which can view 150m ahead and has many uses. The third camera is the narrow camera which sees 250m ahead and provides long- range and very focused view of distant objects. On each side of the car there are two cameras; two are slanted forward, and two are slanted backwards which allows the vehicle to manoeuvring into tight spots. There is also a final back camera which can see up to 50 meters behind and is used mostly for parking, but also provides extremely useful data back to the system.
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