Tesla intends to market its first fully autonomous cars by the end of the year

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that he will promote his company’s intentions to be able to produce its first fully autonomous cars before the end of this year. It’s a very important fact, but we must interpret it correctly to avoid being confused or making costly mistakes.

The first thing we must keep in mind is that we are talking about fully autonomous cars, which are vehicles that have a higher degree of autonomy than the current Tesla models. Today all Tesla models that include Autopilot have a level 3 autonomous driving degree, which means that they have all the hardware to operate autonomously, and the results they provide are generally good, but they must be alert to restore control.

Everything we have said in the previous paragraph implies that Teslas do not actually offer fully autonomous driving, and that they still depend on the driver to a lesser or lesser extent. Well, what Tesla is referring to when he talks about fully autonomous cars at the end of the year is the return to level 4 of autonomous driving, where the car will no longer need our intervention.

Nevertheless, we must be clear that this level does not yet respond in the strict sense to full autonomous driving, since the driving position will be maintained in most cases, due to the limitations that this level will still present, since it may not work if all the requirements and conditions are not met, and this without a driver’s position might result in our being left stranded.

The highest level of autonomous driving is the level 5, which will eliminate the driving position completely, and the car will be able to function in any circumstance and condition, that is, it is equivalent to the level shown in science fiction films and other works of art, in which automobiles controlled by artificial intelligence are capable of functioning just as well as they would in the hands of a human.

The automotive industry is progressing at an astounding rate. Today, the most essential driving assistance functions, framed in the automated driving levels 1 and 2 (braking and lane change assistant, among others) are already present in most of the cars that are currently manufactured, and it may be that with the addition to level 4, this process of level 3 autonomous driving will be democratized.

Source: list23.com