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 | Sep 15, 2015 | Car Services
Mercedes-Benz is considering expanding its audience beyond drivers who are looking to buy cars– in fact, their newest venture may not include drivers at all. Dieter Zetsche, owner of Mercedes-Benz’ parent company Daimler, told Reuters about possible plans for an on-demand limo service similar to Uber, except for one huge differentiator: the cars would be driverless. Mercedes-Benz already runs a car-sharing service app called “car2go,” in which people use their smartphones to find and rent nearby Daimler-owned cars, but this is much more exciting. It’s sounds futuristic, but it’s all part of the current race for the first autonomous vehicle to hit the market. The race is probably most popularly championed by Google, which promises to have a self-driving car by 2020. That’s not the greatest news for Mercedes-Benz because their prototype of a driverless car won’t be released in showrooms until 2025 due to liability issues, according to Reuters. In the meantime, though, Daimler is already making moves. The company joined Audi and BMW earlier this summer in buying HERE, a high-definition digital mapping service created by Nokia. And Zetsche says that driverless cars are a “concrete development goal.” Other big-name contenders like Audi, Tesla, and Ford are attempting to master the art of self-driving cars as well. But Mercedes-Benz is one of only a few companies that are attempting to combine the concept with a taxi service. Some of their biggest competition? None other than Uber itself. Uber and its many drivers have a love-hate relationship, thanks to ongoing conflict about drivers’ pay and their statuses as employees in general. (Independent contractors or employees entitled to benefits like gas...
