Tesla has laid out an ambitious vision for the future of autonomous vehicles, with plans for a fully autonomous Tesla model and a fleet of robo-taxis on the road by 2020. These statements came at a Tesla event held in Palo Alto, during which Elon Musk became lyrical about the technology developed at Tesla. Tesla made no secret of its self-driving plans, with Musk suggesting that one day its vehicles might be delivered without a steering wheel or pedals, and that self-driving would advance to such an extent that human driving became illegal. . While Tesla has a reputation for missing its own deadlines, the industry's rapid development suggests that fully autonomous vehicles really do look like a possibility in the next few years. We're holding our breath in 2020, but Musk's prediction of "more than a million robo-taxis on the road" still doesn't seem too far off.
Look at my, no hands
The event unveiled a new microchip, designed to significantly improve the company's autonomous driving software, Autopilot. The chip, which Musk called "objectively ... the best chip in the world," was designed in-house and marks the transition to more Nvidia microchips in Tesla's vehicles. As Bloomberg claimed, Nvidia disputed some of the claims made in the filing, stating that a system consisting of multiple Nvidia chips would be more powerful, but acknowledged that Tesla had "raised the bar for standalone computers." Musk stated in particular that the equipment installed in Tesla's vehicles was already sufficient for full self-driving capability (called "Level 5 autonomy," which does not require any interference from a driver), and that the company only had to iterate the software to arrive at a true hands-free future.
ViaEngadget
