• Tesla Model 3 crashes into children’s dolls without braking – emergency brake assistant does not react
• Experts criticize Tesla’s self-driving software
• Big competition in the field of autonomous driving – but still a long way to go
A recently published test result showed once again that there is still a long way to go before Tesla’s cars can actually take part in traffic without any driver intervention. With the mega trend of autonomous driving, Tesla does not seem to be far ahead of the competition – on the contrary, the full self-driving software seems to have enormous deficits.
Tesla Model 3 runs over three child dummies without braking
As the IT information portal “Golem” reports, the security community The Dawn Project has tried the full self-driving of the US electric car manufacturer Tesla on a test track in California. The Model 3 failed to recognize a child dummy three times in a row. Instead, the car ran over the artificial children placed at the end of the 110-meter test track at a speed of 40 kilometers per hour. Safety activists at The Dawn Project conclude that Tesla Full-Self-Driving (FSD) version 10.12.2 (cost: 12,000 euros), released on June 1, 2022, cannot detect child-sized objects. The testers came to a harsh verdict in their report: “Tesla’s full self-driving software repeatedly fails this simple and safety-critical test, with potentially fatal results.”
What is particularly piquant about it: the Model 3 is by far the best-selling model electric car on the American market. According to “The Verge” information, 46,707 vehicles of the electric sedan were bought in the first quarter of the current year, followed by the Model S and – at a clear distance – the Ford Mustang Mach-E, of which in the first three months of the year 6,734 copies were purchased in the USA.
No emergency braking
However, the blog “Electrek” later found out when viewing the videos that Tesla’s FSD system was not switched on at the time of the test. However, the emergency brake assistant – which works independently of the FSD – should then react in order to avoid a fatal accident by means of emergency braking. However, the emergency brake did not respond, and the Tesla car rushed into the dolls at full speed. Another limitation should also not go unmentioned: the driver did not have his hands on the steering wheel for the entire duration of the test. However, in the notes on its Autopilot assistance package and on Full Self-Driving, Tesla always emphasizes that the driver must be ready to intervene. As the mentioned test shows, this is a clue that can make the difference between life and death.
Dan O’Dowd: “Worst Commercial Software I’ve Ever Seen”
The test results cause harsh criticism among the experts. Billionaire founder of Green Hills Software, Dan O’Dowd, calls Tesla’s FSD software the worst commercial software he’s ever seen. The candidate for the US Senate, who was involved in testing The Dawn Project, criticized significant deficits in the Tesla software. For these reasons, Tesla’s FSD software poses a major security risk.
In view of the numerous accidents in test cases, it is generally not surprising that the point in time when fully autonomous driving will be permitted on international roads has been pushed back further and further in recent years. The ADAC also assumes that autonomous driving will become established very slowly. Autonomous cars that can drive independently in all traffic situations should only be available on the free German market after 2040. Instead, the proportion of manually driven cars will predominate well into the 21st century.
Megatrend autonomous driving: High competitive pressure
And that despite the fact that numerous companies have been researching autonomous driving for years. Very different companies share the market: large traditional groups such as Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz or BMW, up-and-coming tech groups such as Tesla and NVIDIA, and start-ups such as Waymo, which now belongs to the Alphabet Group.
According to expert opinions, Waymo is currently one step ahead: in a suburb of Phoenix (Arizona), fully automatic taxis have been driving for months, sometimes even without a safety driver behind the wheel. This pilot project got off to a good start and proves the progressiveness of Waymo’s technology, which is very complex and correspondingly expensive. But the competition never sleeps. Around 1,700 specialists are working on the BMW campus in Unterschleißheim near Munich to develop the necessary software algorithms for highly automated driving. The close cooperation between NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz in relation to artificial intelligence in car traffic is also promising. Volkswagen also recently presented the “ID.BUZZ AD1”, a self-driving prototype that is scheduled to come onto the market in 2025. As a result, there are many competing companies that want to get a good position in the potentially billion-dollar market for autonomous driving.
Tesla stock on the up
Regardless of the renewed software problems, Tesla shares have been in a constant upward trend for a good two months. The last quarterly figures, which far exceeded analysts’ expectations despite the macroeconomic headwind, convinced investors that Elon Musk’s company can deal quite successfully with a variety of stress factors such as supply chain problems, high inflation or rising key interest rates. For example, production in the new Gigafactory in Grünheide (Brandenburg) has been greatly expanded in recent weeks, and production in Shanghai is now running at full speed again after the No-COVID lockdowns imposed by the Chinese government in spring.
As a result of the overall better news situation, Tesla shares rose again well above the low for the year ($626 on June 16, 2022) with a current price of $911.99 per share (as of the closing price on August 17, 2022). . However, the record high that the US group marked on November 4, 2021 at 1,234 US dollars is still a long way off.
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