by John Kaweske | Nov 24, 2015 | Car Services, Car Technology
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has been posting publicly to Twitter lately about the companies urgent plans to get their self-driving car software to achieve full autonomy. Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalized full autonomy. If interested, contact autopilot@teslamotors.com. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015 Should mention that I will be interviewing people personally and Autopilot reports directly to me. This is a super high priority. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015 These Tweets and others alluding to the importance of the program and the push to improve it have many speculating that the company is preparing to join the race to launch a self-driving car service able to rival the one being built by the world’s reigning car service: Uber. Tesla just launched its Autopilot feature last month, and currently it enables limited self-driving functions such as allowing the cars to steer themselves on highways. However, the technology has had it’s shortcomings, and response from the public has caused some controversy. Drivers immediately began a trend of posting reckless videos to YouTube that demonstrated things such as the cars’ inability to detect worn lane markers which can cause near-collisions. It should be noted that Musk and Tesla have always stipulated that drivers should remain attentive and ready to grip the wheel at any time. Tesla and Uber aren’t the only companies looking to achieve a vehicle with full driving autonomy. The race has been on in the auto and tech industries for some time. Currently, Google is prototyping vehicles in Mountain View, CA. The University of Michigan has a testing facility open to a number of traditional automakers and tech firms for testing their software. In a previous blog, I discussed...
by John Kaweske | Aug 26, 2015 | Car Technology
Most modern cars come with a service like OnStar, ready to help out the second your car runs into engine trouble or you get into an accident. Most services these days are capable of sending your phone push notifications on the status of your vehicle before anything even goes wrong. But if it does, help is just a button away. It’s a useful service, and a key selling point for new vehicles. But you’re pretty much out of luck if you drive an older car or one from an automaker who for some reason hasn’t hopped on the connected car bandwagon. While the market of unconnected cars continues to shrink as universal adoption becomes eminent, for the moment it’s still a huge untapped market with approximately 150 million unconnected vehicles still on the road. Verizon recognized this market as a huge opportunity and in doing so decided to launch Hum, a service that taps your car’s on-board diagnostic port and transmits technical information through a Bluetooth-enabled speaker clipped to your visor. It works with most cars (electrics and diesels excluded) and any carrier. It also costs just 15 bucks a month. Sounds pretty sweet, right? The Hum service collects data on a range of information, including fuel economy, battery charge level, transmission coolant temperature, and engine error codes. It relays that info to the cloud where your iPhone or Android app can notify you if anything seems to be out of place. If your car has an error code, the app doesn’t just bring it to your attention. It will explain what it means, recommend repairs, and even provide a cost estimate. If something more complex happens, a hotline will connect...
