Tesla's Elon Musk Talks With Google About Self-Driving Cars 199
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has been thinking about bringing autonomous driving technology to Tesla's electric cars. Quoting Bloomberg:
"Musk, 41, said technologies that can take over for drivers are a logical step in the evolution of cars. He has talked with Google about the self-driving technology it’s been developing, though he prefers to think of applications that are more like an airplane’s autopilot system. 'I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self- driving,' Musk said in an interview. 'Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.' ... Google’s approach builds on a push for the driverless-car technology long pursued by the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which held vehicle competitions for carmakers and research labs. Anthony Levandowski, product manager for Google’s self-driving car project, has said the company expects to release the technology within five years. 'The problem with Google’s current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,' Musk said. 'It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things.' ... 'I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based,' Musk said yesterday in an e-mail. 'However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.'"
Musk later warned not to take this as an actual announcement.
Actual Bloomberg.com Article (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/tesla-ceo-talking-with-google-about-autopilot-systems.html [bloomberg.com]
Missing Link to Bloomberg Article (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/tesla-ceo-talking-with-google-about-autopilot-systems.html [bloomberg.com]
Plane / Car Distinction (Score:5, Informative)
Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.
I like the notion, and it's a great frame of reference for consideration. One major distinction between planes and cars: When a plane is on autopilot in a relatively sparse chunk of sky, the time between sensor warning and twisted burning wreckage is tens of seconds to minutes. Most of the time in an ordinary flight plan the plane can wander hundreds of feet without a problem. On a typical chunk of sparsely populated two lane highway, however, If your car's autopilot travels twenty feet out of its lane -- things get exciting very quickly.
Moreover, most airplanes are like long-haul trucks -- they spend most of their miles in transit between heavy traffic areas. A major chunk of American automotive miles are spent with other vehicles within a few dozen feet.
Re:Sick of this over-promoted hipster (Score:4, Informative)
If his name was Joe Smith nobody would care about him.
Wrong. Musk has a track record of making major projects work in areas where others have failed big-time. Tesla and Space-X make stuff that works, at a profit.
There are overpromoted hipsters. Vivek Wadhwa (Y2K COBOL code conversion), Nicholas Negroponte (One Laptop Per Child), Shai Agassi (Better Place), and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Empirica Capital) come to mind. All are heavily into self-promotion, but each of their startups failed.