Fast Technology News on September 18. According to Walter Isaacson’s new biography “Elon Musk” (Elon Musk), it is revealed that as early as 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) almost died due to the automatic driving assistance technology Autopilot during test drives, causing him to become furious with the engineers.
In the chapter on autonomous driving assistance technology in the biography, the author reveals an incident that Musk personally experienced: there was a curve on Interstate 405,Because the lane lines on the road were faded, Autopilot was unable to recognize them, causing the car to swerve and "nearly hit" the oncoming vehicle.
Whenever this happened, Musk would storm into Tesla's offices angrily and rage at his engineers, whom he repeatedly asked to improve the program: "Do something to program this thing properly."
Furthermore, Musk insists that Tesla's cars only need to use optical sensors, just like humans drive primarily with their eyes. He rejects other technologies, such as LiDAR, as too expensive and unnecessary. The biography says his engineers thought lidar was the best option for improving safety, but they couldn't convince Musk to change his mind.
At the same time, Musk also forced Tesla to cancel the millimeter wave radar. Musk once revealed that radar perception does have advantages in special weather.But generally speaking, it is useless in most driving scenarios, and it will cause data processing troubles due to increased redundancy.
Tesla promises that the vision system can reach the level required for automatic assisted driving. However, judging from so many complaints about "ghost cars", many car owners are still not convinced by Tesla's promise.