Tesla Is Being Investigated For Its “Autopilot” System
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an official investigation into Tesla's "self-driving" Autopilot system. Cars from the company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, have been involved in several accidents but the investigation is going to focus on 11 specific cases. Those were accidents where cars crashed into first responders' scenes.
“Since January 2018, the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has identified eleven crashes in which Tesla models of various configurations have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes. The incidents are listed at the end of this summary by date, city, and state,” the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) wrote in the official documents of the investigation.
“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones. The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes.”
Despite the name Autopilot, the car doesn’t drive itself and the driver still has full responsibility. The tech is an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) that allows the vehicle to keep its lane and speed, and interact with the road environment in a clever way but it can be easily fooled. Just recently it was reported that it can mistake the full moon for an amber traffic light.
Waymo Is 99% of the Way to Self-Driving Cars. The Last 1% Is the Hardest
The world’s most famous autonomous car shop has lost its CEO and is still getting stymied by traffic cones. What’s taking so long?
Joel Johnson laughs nervously from the backseat when his self-driving taxi stops in the middle of a busy road in suburban Phoenix. The car, operated by autonomous vehicle pioneer Waymo, has encountered a row of traffic cones in a construction zone, and won’t move. “Go around, man,” Johnson says as he gestures to the drivers honking behind him.
After the vehicle has spent 14 mostly motionless minutes obstructing traffic, a Waymo technician tries to approach—but the car unexpectedly rolls forward, away from him. “It definitely seemed like a dangerous situation,” Johnson recalls.
Incidents like this one, which Johnson posted to his YouTube channel in May, are embarrassing for Waymo—a company that’s having its own problems moving forward. A unit of Alphabet Inc., Waymo hasn’t expanded its robo-taxi service beyond Phoenix after years of careful testing. The company has floated moves into other areas—trucking, logistics, personal vehicles—but plans have yet to materialize. And its production process for adding cars to its driverless fleet has been painfully slow.
This spring, Waymo saw a mass exodus of top talent. That included its chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and the heads of trucking, manufacturing, and automotive partnerships. People familiar with the departures say some executives felt frustrated about the sluggish pace of progress at the enterprise.
Despite years of research and billions of dollars invested, the technology behind self-driving cars still has flaws. Not long ago, a glorious future of autonomous vehicles from Waymo and its many competitors seemed close at hand. Now, “what people are realizing is that the work ahead is really hard,” says Tim Papandreou, a former employee and transit consultant.
Waymo, by most measures, is still the leader of the world’s autonomous vehicle effort. Development of its technology began at Google more than a decade ago, and the company hit a historic milestone last year when it started its completely driverless taxi program in Arizona. During the pandemic, many rivals gave up on self-driving (Uber Technologies Inc.) or sold themselves to rivals (Zoox, which was acquired by Amazon.com Inc.). Waymo kept going, raising $5.7 billion from outside investors since last summer, adding to the untold billions Alphabet has already spent.
Self-Driving Vehicle Industry Consolidation
Waymo points to its remarkable track record vs. those of its rivals. Since last fall, the company says it’s provided “tens of thousands” of rides without a driver present in Arizona. “We consider that to be a huge accomplishment,” a Waymo spokesperson said in a statement. “In fact, the absence of any other such fully autonomous commercial offering is a demonstration of how hard it is to achieve this feat.”
But the company’s remaining competitors have also started to hit milestones. Argo AI, backed by Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG, will start charging for robot rides in Miami and Austin later this year—albeit with a human minder behind the wheel. Zoox and Cruise, which is funded by General Motors, Honda, and SoftBank, have begun testing autonomous vehicles without a safety driver on public roads in San Francisco. While none of these companies has yet turned a profit on self-driving tech, they’re all directing billions of dollars toward erasing Waymo’s early lead.
Waymo separated from Google’s research lab in 2016 to become the latest subsidiary of Alphabet, and went on a hiring spree, recruiting personnel to cut business deals with automakers, draft financial models, lobby state houses, and market its technology. At the time, many Waymonauts—as employees call themselves—believed the machinery was in place for fully driverless cars to hit public roads imminently.
In 2017, the year Waymo launched self-driving rides with a backup human driver in Phoenix, one person hired at the company was told its robot fleets would expand to nine cities within 18 months. Staff often discussed having solved “99% of the problem” of driverless cars. “We all assumed it was ready,” says another ex-Waymonaut. “We’d just flip a switch and turn it on.”
But it turns out that last 1% has been a killer. Small disturbances like construction crews, bicyclists, left turns, and pedestrians remain headaches for computer drivers. Each city poses new, unique challenges, and right now, no driverless car from any company can gracefully handle rain, sleet, or snow. Until these last few details are worked out, widespread commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles is all but impossible.
“We got to the moon, and it’s like, now what?” says Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst in Detroit and longtime industry spectator. “We stick a flag in it, grab some rocks, but now what? We can’t do anything with this moon.”
At first, it appeared that Waymo would produce cars at a supercharged pace. In 2018, Waymo signed up to turn as many as 20,000 Jaguar SUVs into Waymo autonomous vehicles. Months later, it said it would expand its fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans to more than 60,000. Waymo planned to buy the cars and install what it called its “Driver”—a suite of cameras, sensors, and proprietary computer gear.
“There’s not a lot in assembly,” then-CEO John Krafcik, a former auto executive, declared at an event that year.
In reality, skilled disassembly is required. Engineers must take apart the cars and put them back together by hand. One misplaced wire can leave engineers puzzling for days over where the problem is, according to a person familiar with the operations who describes the system as cumbersome and prone to quality problems. Like others who spoke candidly about the company, the former employee asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
The painstaking nature of the process has left Waymo without a viable path to mass production, the person says. Waymo has slashed parts orders on the Chrysler minivan project and has had far fewer Jaguars delivered than initially expected, according to people familiar with the automakers’ plans.
The Waymo spokesperson says the company is not supply-constrained in Detroit, and that it’s on track to hit all its internal production targets with Jaguar, but declines to share details. The company also disputes that it’s fallen behind schedule on constructing its Chrysler vehicles, noting that these agreements are “fluid and subject to change.”
Waymo’s competitors in Detroit already have vast manufacturing capabilities. Argo and Cruise, for example, plan to build their driverless cars from the ground up. Insiders generally believe that Waymo is the leader on technology, but manufacturing capacity could give Detroiters the advantage when it comes to rolling out fleets, according to Ramsey, the Gartner analyst. “I don’t know what their current number is,” he says of Waymo’s production. “But it hasn’t moved much.”
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In 2019, Waymo rented a warehouse in Detroit to be, as Krafcik said at the time, “the world’s first dedicated autonomous plant.” Michigan officials agreed to give the company an $8 million grant partly in exchange for creating at least 100 jobs in the state. As of last fall, Waymo had hired 22 people to work at the facility, according to state filings. The company says it’s exceeded the 100-person job-creation pledge in the state, and would not comment on the headcount of specific offices. Earlier this year, Waymo was trying to produce 5 to 10 vehicles a day at the factory, says one former employee.
After years of publicly touting the wonders of self-driving, Waymo personnel started talking in recent years about managing people’s expectations of what their cars could do, and when. Several people who worked at Waymo describe parent company Alphabet as extremely cautious, particularly after an Uber self-driving test vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018.
For example, Waymo’s ad hoc board shot down a splashy marketing pitch from Krafcik, according to three people familiar with the decision. In 2018, he wanted to stage a multicity demonstration of the company’s technology, with pop-up marketing installations showcasing what Waymo could do. Tesla Inc. had carried out something similar with its early models. But the company’s board—which consists of Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Alphabet honchos and a few outside investors—worried about repeating the failures of Google Glass, the flopped augmented-reality spectacles, by introducing a product before it was ready. A Waymo spokesperson said that the company simply went in a different direction.
Krafcik left the company in April. The new co-CEOs are Takedra Mawakana, formerly Waymo’s top lobbyist, and Dmitri Dolgov, its top technician. The pair met with backers and partners this spring as Waymo closed its financing round. According to one investor, the new chiefs were upbeat in a recent meeting, saying that with the pandemic fading the company was gearing up to make “huge headway” on its goals.
Meanwhile, in Phoenix, even after his traffic cone incident, YouTuber Joel Johnson was still enthusiastic about the technology. “It seems to handle pretty much everything that I try and throw at it,” he says. In other words, it works 99% of the time.
Will you own a self-driving car in your lifetime? Are they even safe? Here’s the deal
© istock
The dream of the self-driving car — you get in, program your destination, ease the seat back, and let the car take you where you need to go. Read a book. Maybe take a nap or play a game on the in-car entertainment screen. Regardless, you will not need to watch the road. The car will get you there and back safely.
Automation and autonomous driving are complex subjects. What engineers can safely deliver doesn’t always match what marketers want to sell.
This guide will walk you through what you need to know about automotive autopilot, self-driving technology, and driver aids today and tomorrow.
When discussing automotive assistance systems’ terminology, no one agrees on what to call anything in this field. From engineering jargon to marketing speak, the lingo continues to evolve.
Roughly speaking, you can sort the technologies people might refer to as self-driving into two categories — driver support and automation systems. Read on to see how they differ.
Driver support
Driver support technology reduces the workload on the driver. Today, most automakers sell various driver support systems, either as standard equipment or as options on their cars. These include intelligent or adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assists, and hands-free capability.
Autonomous systems
Autonomous systems do the driving for you. No automaker today sells a true autonomous system, but some are pushing toward that technology. One such project under way is Waymo, a sister company to Google that is testing autonomous rideshare vehicles in Phoenix using converted Chrysler Pacifica minivans.
Six levels of self-driving technology
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has laid out a useful framework for thinking about self-driving systems. They sort the technologies into six levels, labeled zero through five (OK, even automotive engineers don’t always do the logical thing).
However, not every level is classified as autonomous driving. According to the SAE, levels zero through two are considered driver support features, while levels three through five are classified as having autonomous capability.
Level 0
At Level 0, the car reacts only to the driver’s input. Even if it uses sensors to warn you of surrounding traffic, like a blind-spot alert system or a lane-departure warning, it still has no self-driving capability to correct or counter the perceived threat.
Level 1
At Level 1, your car can intervene slightly in your driving in an attempt to keep you safe. A lane-keeping system that helps steer to center you in a lane is a Level 1 technology.
Level 2
At Level 2, features communicate with one another, and more than one can be active simultaneously. An example of this autonomous technology is an adaptive cruise control system that adjusts your speed to keep you a certain distance from the car ahead while centering the car in its lane.
Currently, Level 2 systems are the most sophisticated technology sold on cars in America. Some automakers describe these systems in ways that make them seem more advanced than Level 2 standards because they allow drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel briefly. However, all these systems require drivers to keep their eyes focused ahead. Drivers need to be ready at all times to take over control of the car at a moment’s notice.
Level 3
At Level 3, the car can drive itself under limited conditions, but the driver must remain aware and prepared to take over. Automakers have tested Level 3 systems that will allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel in a traffic jam, for instance, but prompt the driver to take over when the congestion eases.
According to Honda and a few other reputable sites, the Honda 100 Legend Flagship car is the first Level 3 autonomous car. Right now, it’s only available in Japan for leasing. It was released on March 5, 2021.
There are no Level 3 systems currently sold to consumers in the U.S.
Level 4
At Level 4, the car can drive itself in a fixed loop on known roads. The rider is not required to take over driving at any time. These vehicles may or may not have a steering wheel or pedals. In some places, Level 4 driverless rideshare vehicles (like Waymo’s) are in limited testing. But they are not yet approved for general use in any state.
Level 5
At Level 5, the car can drive itself under any conditions and on any road. These vehicles do not have steering wheels or pedals. At this point, Level 5 systems are theoretical.
Can you trust it?
All self-driving systems currently for sale in the U.S. are SAE Level 2 or lower. It is not safe to remove your attention from driving while behind the wheel of any car currently sold with this technology. However, it is safe to briefly remove your hands from the wheel with some Level 2 systems under certain conditions. But you should remain prepared to take over the driving at a moment’s notice.
Tesla advertises its automation systems more aggressively than any other U.S. automaker. Still, its advertising materials flatly state, “Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.
”Do you still need to pay attention to the road?
Yes. Always. Even when using driving assist technology in Levels 0 to 3, it’s required that you always keep your eyes on the road.
However, when using low-speed applications, including self-parking features, keeping your eyes on the road or staying inside the vehicle may not be needed. For example, some luxury brands offer a self-parking remote that handles this maneuver for things like parallel parking.
Which cars have self-driving capability?
Virtually every automaker selling cars in the U.S. today offers driver-assistance systems that can reduce the workload on the driver. These include adaptive cruise control that can adjust speed to maintain distance from the car ahead or automatic emergency braking that can slow or stop the car to avoid hitting a vehicle or pedestrian or reduce the severity of a crash.
None of these systems are so reliable that the driver can take their attention from the task of driving, though.
Many manufacturers currently market systems up to and including Level 2 automation. This approach combines adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist into a system that requires that the driver keep their hands on the wheel but relieves some of the driver’s workload.
A prime example is cruise control with stop-and-go capability that allows the driver to negotiate heavy traffic without using the pedals.
Nissan ProPILOT
Nissan markets this as ProPILOT, “a hands-on driver-assist system that combines Nissan’s Intelligent Cruise Control and Steering Assist technologies and includes a stop and hold function that can bring the vehicle to a full stop, hold in place, and can bring you back up to speed when traffic starts moving again.”
Newer versions use the vehicle’s navigation system information to slow for curves ahead and prompt the driver to adjust for posted speed limits. While it will keep the car centered in its lane, it will not steer the car through curves like Kia’s Ford’s, GM’s, or Tesla’s systems.
Subaru EyeSight
Subaru’s EyeSight system does much the same. It also has a pre-collision braking system that alerts the driver to an impending crash and applies full braking power to try to prevent it.
Volvo Pilot Assist
Volvo’s Pilot Assist allows the driver to set a preferred speed and preferred distance from the vehicle ahead. It can then change speed to maintain that distance and keep the car centered in its lane. But Pilot Assist will warn the driver audibly and shut itself off if the road starts to curve or if it detects that the driver has removed their hands from the wheel.
Mercedes-Benz Distronic Plus with Steering Assist
Mercedes-Benz’s Distronic Plus with Steering Assist also combines adaptive cruise control with a lane-centering system. In keeping with Mercedes’ autobahn image, it functions at up to 120 mph and warns drivers if they are about to be passed.
Another feature, called Parktronic, allows drivers to follow the car’s commands under 20 mph as it self-parks the vehicle. The driver keeps control of the car with the gas and brake pedals. The driver just needs to put the car in drive or reverse as it drives and steers itself into a parking space.
Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving
Tesla markets its evolving suite of self-driving technologies more aggressively than any other automaker. This has led to some confusion as to what level of automation Tesla cars are currently capable of. The electric car company sells the systems under two names: Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving.
Every Tesla vehicle available in 2021 ships with the company’s Autopilot system enabled. Autopilot is a traffic-aware cruise control system that accelerates and slows the car to match the speed of the cars around it, combined with a lane-keeping assist system that centers the car in a clearly marked lane. That’s all it is. The marketing name “Autopilot” may make it sound considerably more advanced. But it is similar to adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist systems offered by most automakers, like Nissan’s ProPILOT or Subaru’s EyeSight.
Older Teslas use torque sensors in the steering wheel to monitor the driver’s attention level and promptly alert them if their attention seems to be waning. Newer models use a more accurate camera for the same purpose.
Full Self-Driving
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is considerably more sophisticated. Despite its name, it does not possess SAE Level 5 self-driving capability. Full Self-Driving can park the car in a parking space, back it out of a parking space, and change lanes on its own at highway speeds. A more advanced system in beta testing can slow the car for stop signs and traffic lights and navigate highway on-ramps and offramps. Tesla regularly sends updates to this system remotely to cars currently involved in the beta test.
Crucially, Full Self-Driving does not allow the driver to take their attention from the road. They may temporarily take their hands from the wheel but should be prepared to take over driving at any moment. Tesla’s own marketing materials caution, “The currently enabled Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
Full Self-Driving is a costly option, even by luxury car standards. As of this writing, the Tesla self-driving price for the feature adds $10,000 to the total cost. Tesla promises to update it regularly in hopes of eventually releasing an SAE Level 5 autonomous driving system to everyone who has purchased Full Self-Driving.
However, in a recent letter to California state regulators, Tesla said that Full Self-Driving would remain at Level 2. The company said it did “not expect significant enhancements” that would “shift the responsibility for the entire dynamic driving task to the system.” Instead, the letter said, Full Self-Driving “will continue to be an SAE Level 2, advanced driver assistance feature.”
Consumers should be aware that the company has told shoppers it will someday have Level 5 capability and has told government regulators that it would not.
General Motors Super Cruise
General Motors offers its own advanced driver assistance system, an SAE Level 2 system called Super Cruise. Like Tesla’s Autopilot, Super Cruise includes an adaptive cruise control that will speed up and slow down the vehicle to maintain a driver-selected distance from the vehicle ahead. It also has a lane-keeping system that tries to center the car in its lane even through curves in the road, and automatic emergency braking that brakes the car in an attempt to avert a collision.
Super Cruise requires the driver to stay alert and keep their hands near the wheel. It includes a driver monitoring system that watches the driver’s eyes and warns them if their attention seems to be drifting from the road. GM says, “Super Cruise allows the driver to drive hands-free when compatible road driving conditions allow the feature to be available. But the driver still needs to pay close attention to the road. Even while using the Super Cruise driver assistance technology, drivers should always pay attention while driving and not use a hand-held device.”
Super Cruise is currently available on most Cadillac vehicles and the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV electric vehicles. GM plans to extend it to parts of the Buick and GMC lineup in 2022. Super Cruise is free for the first three years but requires a subscription after that.
Of note, Super Cruise works only on roads mapped by GM. The company mapped at least 200,000 miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada using lidar mapping technology.
Ford Blue Cruise
Ford and its Lincoln luxury division recently introduced their own Level 2 automation system, called Blue Cruise. Buyers can order Blue Cruise on many new Ford and Lincoln vehicles today. But the system isn’t active yet. Ford expects to activate it late in 2021 through an over-the-air software update that will not require a visit to the dealership.
Like Tesla’s Autopilot and GM’s Super Cruise systems, Blue Cruise pairs an adaptive cruise control with lane-keeping assistance. It allows drivers to temporarily remove their hands from the wheel while keeping their eyes on the road.
Blue Cruise automatically steers the vehicle using more than 100,000 miles of pre-mapped roads stored in the system. In Blue Cruise-equipped cars, the driver’s instrument cluster switches to a blue background when driving on a road where the system can be activated.
A subscription to Blue Cruise costs $600 for three years. However, to use it, you must buy an option package that has all the necessary equipment. The cost range is $995 to $2,600, depending on the model.
Traffic jam assists
Luxury automakers have begun developing semiautonomous driving systems specifically for use in heavy traffic. They allow the driver to relax their attention and let the car accelerate and brake to keep its place in traffic, but systems work only at lower speeds.
BMW’s Active Driving Assistant Pro, for instance, shuts off when traffic exceeds 40 mph. It will not steer the vehicle through curves.
Audi is developing its own Traffic Jam Pilot that, it says, should allow drivers to remove their hands from the wheel below 37 mph. But that system has not received regulatory approval.
The future of self-driving cars
Engineers from more than a dozen companies are testing self-driving systems in hopes of producing an SAE Level 5 self-driving car. It seems safe to predict that the technology is coming.
But the engineering challenge of getting there is immense. A car that can drive itself on well-maintained roads may make a critical mistake on poorly maintained roads. What if a car that can react safely to normal traffic may not react safely to unusual situations? A car that can do everything engineers ask of it may fail when presented with a problem they never considered (in one recent incident, a self-driving car in testing was baffled by a truck bed full of traffic signs being delivered to a construction site. The car had no idea what to do).
Beyond the engineering challenge, 50 sets of state laws (plus the District of Columbia) must adapt to decide safety and liability issues before self-driving cars can become common.
The market will also have its say. Volkswagen recently unveiled a concept car that would charge by the mile for self-driving capability. Executives reasoned that as long as getting your car to drive you somewhere costs less than a train ticket to that same place, they could charge for using the self-driving feature. So, while some automakers hope to charge buyers upfront for automation, others may make it available for short-term rental only.
