With autonomous technology gradually making its way into passenger vehicles, the new methods of transport will likely warrant new regulations. In attempts to work toward those road regulations, Electrek reports that Tesla Motors offered to share all of its autopilot data with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
According to the report, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would consider sharing the data with other automakers as well. Per Electrek, Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Programs, Sterling Anderson, confirmed two weeks ago that the data included 780 million miles at the time—but it’s growing quickly. Anderson said a million miles tack onto that total every 10 hours, with data collected from over 70,000 Teslas with autopilot hardware on the road.
Tesla did not, however, confirm whether the Department of Transportation took its offered autopilot information, according to Electrek. In considering complete autonomy in vehicles—a system that is safer than a human at the wheel—Musk is confident on a timeframe of less than two years for the technology.
Advertisement
It’ll be longer than that before we see it on roads, though, which is perhaps part of the reason why Tesla offered all of its autopilot data to the department. Below is Musk’s explanation of the timelines, from Electrek:
“However, regulators will take I think at least another year, which will of course depend on what part of the world you are in because they will want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if a vehicle is autonomous versus non-autonomous.”
Per Electrek, Musk said an autonomous-driving system would need to be safer than a human driver before gaining approval from regulators. But even if the regulators aren’t all for the idea yet, it seems as if the general public trusts the autopilot systems Tesla currently has in place.
Sponsored
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
