The truth is, we don’t have fully autonomous cars – I’m talking about level 5 autonomy. The closest to come to it so far is Tesla with its AutoPilot system, but it’s nowhere near being trustworthy enough to let it run all on its own without a human looking after it. Musk has gone on record saying that all Tesla’s built after October of 2016 are level 5 Autonomous capable. Of course, that means Tesla’s cars can do so with nothing more than cameras and radar, something no other manufacturer can seem to agree with. Most believe that at SAE-certified autonomous cars will require a full sensor suite that includes, at the very least, cameras, radar, and lidar, if not other sensors as well. Scott Miller, the Director of Autonomous Vehicle Integration over at GM, said, “To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous with cameras and radar, I don’t know how you do that.”

Of course, nobody really knows what SAE level-5 will really by, so Miller’s insinuation that he knows whether or not Tesla’s system is SAE-certifiable for level 5 is a moot point – SAE doesn’t know what level 5 autonomy requires and there is no test out there for it as of the time of this writing. Be that as it may, Miller still says that Elon Musk is giving us the ol’ leg pull because using just camera’s and radar isn’t possible

“The level of technology and knowing what it takes to do the mission, to say you can be a full level five with just cameras and radars is not physically possible. I think you need the right sensors and right computing package to do it. Think about it; we have LIDAR, radar, and cameras on this. The reason we have that type of sensor package is that we think you need not be deeply integrated in to be level five, you should have redundancy.”

Of course, we should keep in mind that these comments are coming from a company that’s barely at level two, and just launched the “Supercruise” system in a single vehicle for the first time. That system is considered level-2 and allows hands-off driving on certain stretches of highway. So, you could really chalk this one off to someone who doesn’t have experience in anything more than an entry-level technology trying to call out the man who practically pioneered the self-driving revolution.

And, let’s not forget that Elon has been criticized before as well – remember when they said it was crazy to land a rocket, upright on a platform and reuse said rocket later on? Yeah, I do too, and guess what? Elon did it. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see, and I can appreciate the want for redundant systems and backups for safety, but telling someone they can’t do something it’s a surefire way to motivate them to prove you wrong. So, we shall see…

References

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