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Speculation: Model X will contain "full autopilot" IE self driving.

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I believe that the Model X will contain the necessary hardware to be fully autonomous. The catch is that for the first couple of years it will sit silently in the background and collect data from human drivers over the course of millions of miles. This data will be uploaded daily to a central supercomputer that will create a deep neural network that will allow fully autonomous driving to take place in the near future.

What better way to teach a computer how to drive than to sample the driving habits of tens of thousands of drivers?

Here is a video from Nvidia on the subject: GTC 2015: A Short History of Deep Learning, ImageNet (part 4) - YouTube

Also, Elon made a comment about a big announcement for the fall in this video: GTC 2015: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang Interviews Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk (part 9) - YouTube

Here at 11:52 is what got me to thinking about this:

GTC 2015: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang Interviews Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk (part 9) - YouTube
 
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Running a large number of cars in "shadow Mode" enables them to first perfect the system prior to presenting to regulators for autonomous driving approval was interesting.

The X will need side & rear camera\radar sensors for full autonomy???
 
I am 100% certain that Tesla has been collecting data ever since the first autopilot equipped Model S hit the road.
I am optimistic that Tesla will have both Model S and Model X be "mostly autopilot" driving by the end of 2016.
I would be surprised if the Model X at launch already had all the sensors and all the compute horse power to do fully autonomous driving in city traffic.
Having talked to people doing research on this topic the amount of sensors and compute considered necessary would be prohibitive for a car that is supposed to launch... let's say at some point later this year...
 
Elon has said openly that Model S already has the hardware to be autonomous, so X will also have it. In today's announcement Tesla went further and said that in about 6 mos they'd release OTA an update that would allow autopilot on highways and at low speed on private property...full driverless mode. So X will have that version in it's initial beta.

i think the low speed private property driverless will get a lot of attention as tech company campuses that are crawling with Tesla's set up Tesla autopilot valet friendly parking rules. These will be the first real world setting where we'll see genuine driverless cars doing something useful and pretty amazing, literally dropping off and picking up people without anyone in the drivers seat.
 
I think it will require rear facing cameras to determine upcoming traffic (especially needed on freeways with large speed differences such as the German Autobahn). They could of course have cameras in the outside mirror stalks (I don't want to start another mirror discussion). This would make it different than the Model S. It makes me wonder how they drove a car from SF to Seatlle. Did it never change lanes? Does it require the driver to indicate the lane changes (like at the D event)?

I can't wait to have assisted Freeway driving on our X though. Living in the middle of a mostly empty large state (AZ), most drives are multiple hours on a freeway with little to do.
 
actually, roomba (or similar devices) is a good comparison

except replace 'roomba' with 2-ton SUV

and

replace 'dusty floor' with 'congested asphalt full of speeding tin cans with actual human lives inside'

but other than that, yea, pretty similar behavior.
 
Elon has said openly that Model S already has the hardware to be autonomous, so X will also have it. In today's announcement Tesla went further and said that in about 6 mos they'd release OTA an update that would allow autopilot on highways and at low speed on private property...full driverless mode. So X will have that version in it's initial beta.

i think the low speed private property driverless will get a lot of attention as tech company campuses that are crawling with Tesla's set up Tesla autopilot valet friendly parking rules. These will be the first real world setting where we'll see genuine driverless cars doing something useful and pretty amazing, literally dropping off and picking up people without anyone in the drivers seat.
In Masdar city, Abu Dhabi they already hade sellfdriving cars to take people around the city so tesla will not be first with that. It may be the first car that normal people can buy how can drive automatically but if so it will be the newer version of Model S and not Model X
 
I just watched the Nvidia video
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/44508-Elon-Speaks-with-NVIDIA-CEO-Jen-Hsun-Huang-3-17-2015?p=942798#post942798
And noticed a few things:
- It requires more than the current sensor set to do full autonomous driving
- they are pushing the limits of the current nvidia (model s) hardware

It makes me wonder if the model x and future MS will come with upgraded CPUs and perhaps additional sensors. Elon stated that they start with additional hardware and then work on the software to use more and more of the capabilities.

This is me hoping for the model x to be more (hw) future proof the day we get them and already being equipped with enough hw to support the next few years of software upgrades.
 
I own a Roomba and it is one dumb machine. I wish MobilEye would apply their talents to robotic vacuums!

Full Auto Pilot likely won't be available at Model X launch but I think it's coming by end of year, for freeways and highways only.

We bought a Neato cleaning robot. Much better than a roomba, it uses Lidar to map the room and it never bounces into anything. Quite fun watching it clean a room by carefully going around the edges first then cleaning the rest with zamboni like passes.
 
In Masdar city, Abu Dhabi they already hade sellfdriving cars to take people around the city so tesla will not be first with that. It may be the first car that normal people can buy how can drive automatically but if so it will be the newer version of Model S and not Model X
You think the current autopilot MX (and MS) hardware won't support self-driving? And you think that newer hardware will be first available on the MS and not on a newer MX?
 
In Masdar city, Abu Dhabi they already hade sellfdriving cars to take people around the city so tesla will not be first with that. It may be the first car that normal people can buy how can drive automatically but if so it will be the newer version of Model S and not Model X

Those cars get a little help from build in RFID type tags that help them find their way. They still have sensors to stop for pedestrians. I think it is a lot easier than free driving cars.

I think the Model X will have any new hardware just before the Model S. I think if there is any, it will be shown on the Model X at the reveal and than be immediately available on the Model S cars coming of the line. Of course, who knows..
 
I think the Model X will have any new hardware just before the Model S. I think if there is any, it will be shown on the Model X at the reveal and than be immediately available on the Model S cars coming of the line. Of course, who knows..

I'm pretty sure they use a lot of the same hardware and wiring. It would also be a good publicity stunt to say that all the 2015 (at least) produced cars already have whatever new things they show on the X and simply enable it OTA.

I think (and hope) they learned from their "sorry, we can't upgrade old cars with autopilot hardware..." Leaving early adopters and others totally sidelined.
 
I've never understood this mindset. You buy a product as is and shouldn't expect it to ever be upgraded beyond how you bought it.

I don't (necessarily) disagree with you. But they always said that whatever new things (software) that where coming in the future, was going to be released as a retrofitted option. So (naturally) people took this statement literary.

But I also have the exact mindset as you. I don't expect anything more than what is delivered. Everything else is pure bonus. :smile:
 
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I don't (necessarily) disagree with you. But they always said that whatever new things (software/hardware) that where coming in the future, was going to be released as a retrofitted option. So (naturally) people took this statement literary.
I do not recall Tesla ever stating that all new HARDWARE would be capable of being retrofitted to older cars. That is what you appear to be saying in your post.
 
I just watched the Nvidia video

- they are pushing the limits of the current nvidia (model s) hardware

I don't think the Tesla autopilot system is running from the Tegra unit in the display/dash. For one thing, it's hard to do real-time on Linux in the way that is required here. For another, that system is already quite busy and as you say, occupied. They have new dedicated processors handling autopilot duties, or I'll eat my hat.