Items tagged with Elon Musk
We're still not quite there when it comes to full Level 5 autonomous vehicles that you can purchase from dealer lots (or with the a few mouse strokes as you can with a Tesla), but we're getting closer. Tesla just announced the launch of Navigate on Autopilot, which is a further expansion of self-driving capabilities incorporated into its electric vehicles. Navigate on Autopilot is a new active guidance feature within Software Version 9.0, and is part of the Enhanced Autopilot self-driving suite. With Navigate on Autopilot, Tesla says that drivers will be able to travel on a highway from...
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Elon Musk and SpaceX have been doing some very cool things over the past decade with rockets. While the rockets SpaceX has been sending into space aren’t the sort capable of flying to the moon or Mars, they are capable of ferrying cargo safely to the ISS in Earth orbit and mostly returning to Earth in one piece. The big news this week was the unveiling of the SpaceX BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) spacecraft that can fly to the moon and beyond. During the unveiling of the rocket, Musk said that the BFR already has its first passenger booked, but during the event, no names were offered. When Musk...
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One lucky person is about to “boldly go where no [private passenger] has gone before”. SpaceX recently announced that they have booked the world’s first private flight to the moon. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk promised in early 2017 that two tourists would take to the stars by the end of of 2018. Musk hinted that the potential passengers had already paid significant deposits and would begin training for their flights later that year. The passengers were originally supposed to be aboard the Falcon Heavy carrying a Dragon capsule and take off from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad...
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A funny thing happened earlier this week. SpaceX founder Elon Musk went on Joe Rogan's podcast, drank a little whisky and puffed on a blunt rolled with weed and tobacco, and the Internet went bananas. Shares of Tesla, the electric vehicle company Musk co-founded and currently serves as CEO, fell afterwards. Musk smoking weed made plenty of headlines, but that wasn't the most interesting part of the podcast. What grabbed our attention was when Musk teased an imminent Neuralink announcement, along with his thoughts on fusing human brains with a "high-bandwidth" interface, effectively merging us with...
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When it comes to electric vehicles, the Tesla Model 3 is arguably the most talked about product on the market. After the success of the Model S and the Model X, Tesla aimed down-market with the smaller Model 3 sedan. While the promise of a true $35,000 (before $7,500 federal tax credit) version has yet to be achieved, that isn't stopping Tesla from expanding the Model 3 family at the high-end, as witnessed by the recently introduced dual-motor variant. The Model 3 (for now) starts at $49,000 for a rear-wheel-drive car, and jumps to $54,000 for dual-motors (all-wheel-drive). However, selecting the...
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Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days, as it's being used in everything from our smartphones to our digital assistants to even the vehicles we drive (or rather, are driven for us). However, as AI becomes even more powerful, there are those that say that the technology should have limits on where it can be applied. Most often, those limits are envisioned for robots that would be placed on the battlefield and would have the ability to target and potentially kill without human oversight. A group of researchers and companies that has expertise in the...
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Tesla has been fighting the media over the past few months as it has struggled to reach production milestones with the Model 3 mainstream electric sedan. Along the way, it has battled bad press surrounding Autopilot failures, and CEO Elon Musk has even questioned the journalistic integrity of some publications in what he sees as an "conspiracy" against Tesla. Now, a new result from the Luxembourg Testing and standardization authority (ILNAS) has Tesla screaming bloody murder about biased testing procedures. The testing and standards body put a 2015 model year Model S, which...
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In an excited email to employees, Tesla founder and chief executive officer Elon Musk wrote, "We did it!!," making sure to add an extra exclamation point for emphasis. What Tesla did, according to Musk's email, is finally achieve the automaker's goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 electric vehicles in a single week, hitting the goal in the last week of the quarter. But that's not all. "Not only did we factory gate over 5000 Model 3’s, but we also achieved the S & X production target for a combined 7000 vehicle week!," Musk added. 7000 cars, 7 days ♥️ Tesla Team ♥️ — Elon...
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We haven't heard much about the Tesla Semi in recent months, but development of the revolutionary electric vehicle (EV) is still ongoing and new interest in the vehicle sparked this week in a tweet. Despite the "production hell" that Tesla is currently experiencing with the Model 3 -- along with accusations of internal sabotage -- Elon Musk has given an update via Twitter on one peculiar feature that is under development for Autopilot: a Mad Max mode. Fully autonomous vehicles tend to take a more cautious approach when it comes to lane changes, leaving a few car lengths in between vehicles...
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It's not quite the Skynet that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned us about, but researchers from the Musk-based OpenAI initiative have made a breakthrough in AI algorithms using Dota 2 as a testbed. OpenAI's achievement is remarkable due in part to its scope. Most AI versus human matches -- be it go or a computer game -- involves a single computer against a single human (as was the case with OpenAI’s victory last year). But OpenAI has managed to train its AI to master competing against humans on a five-player team. The team of five neural networks that was developed is collectively...
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Ever since the original Model S launched back in 2012, one of the bedrocks of Tesla's forward-looking mission was the inclusion of integrated (and free) in-car internet. This cellular internet connection powers everything from vehicle navigation enhancements, to music streaming, to over-the-air updates that continually provide new functionality to the Tesla EV family. However, it looks as though Tesla has grown tired of giving away its full-fledged internet service to customers and will begin making some changes starting July 1st. We should come right out and clarify that the new policy that takes...
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There has been a massive cloud of negativity swirling around Tesla over the past few months as it ramps up production of the Model 3 mainstream EV. Over the weekend, CEO Elon Musk revealed that a [now former] employee admitted to "extensive and damaging sabotage" to the company. Today, Tesla has filed formal action against the former employee, Martin Tripp, in a lawsuit. The lawsuit, which was filed in a Nevada district court, alleges that Tripp wrote software to hack into the Tesla's proprietary manufacturing operating system (MOS) at its Nevada Gigafactory facility....
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Tesla is going through a critical phase in its existence at the moment. You can count that quarters that the company has reported a profit in its decade of existence on one hand; it has come under attack for Autopilot crashes (including some that resulted in death); and recently, a spontaneously combusting Model S made headlines. We have to keep in mind that all of this is going on as Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company would be laying off 9 percent of its workforce right in the middle of Model 3 "production hell". That sure is a lot of negative news for one company,...
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Tesla recently welcomed a number of new faces to its executive team. The latest crop of executives have been drawn from corporations such as Apple, Amazon, and Snap. The new hires are part of Tesla’s major company reorganization to ensure increased production of the critical Model 3. The company recently hired Stuart Bowers as the Vice President of Engineering. He will oversee a number of facets of Tesla’s software and hardware engineering. Bowers was the Vice President of Monetization of Snap, where he focused on machine learning and advertisement infrastructure. Bowers has also...
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