After the Director of AutoPilot Programs at Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), Sterling Anderson reported that the company was collecting data on its autopilot system, it has emerged that the company also offered to share the data. Anderson claimed that Tesla Motors had close to 780 million miles worth of tracking data in their hands and that in every ten hours they were adding a million miles more. This is all thanks to their massive 70,000 fleet of cars that they have sold and are constantly moving. All these cars are equipped with the Autopilot hardware, so the amount of information they spread is massive.
Tesla to share Autopilot data with others
As analysts and experts noted that the company should be sharing the data with others and regulators to help themselves fully get a useful and efficient autonomous system, news has come out that the company offered to share with the US Department of Transport. The CEO of the electric car making company said that they were willing to share the information with other automakers if it came to that also.
The company might have chosen to share data with the DoT so as to help themselves with the regulations and to enable themselves to regulate them fully. It would rapidly increase the adoption of regulations for autonomous driving if they shared the data.
Elon Musk also announced that the company was going to host an event at the end of the year at which they would release details of their next Autopilot program which they plan to release. Musk predicts that the new technology would be available by the end of 2017 and unconfirmed reports indicate that the rollout of the new technology might just be as predicted.
The electric car firm will initially introduce a new sensor which will probably support full self-driving features and then release the software that enables the use of autonomous features. The software’s release has to be approved by the regulatory committee as well so that the company can give a commercially viable level 4 autonomous driving system.
Level 4 autonomous systems allow drivers to seat in cars, simply tell the systems where they want to go and then after the car will simply drive on its own, without any further input. Musk explained that the company was practically less than two years from complete autonomy, which would be something safer than a human. However, it all depends on which area of the world you are in since they would need evidence of millions of miles to show the substantial improvement in safety.
Therefore, one sign that the autonomous driving feature is on its way is when the regulators start having access to the driving data, something which Tesla has enabled them to have. Musk already said that his company offered the data to the US DoT, and it is still unclear whether the Department of Transport had taken up the data.
Musk also added that for the autonomous driving feature to be allowed, the company had to prove that the feature was two times safer than for humans, and for some cases even 5 to 10 times.
