This feature started out being called “Top Best a’ Tesla.” In recent weeks, after the death of Joshua Brown, it may be should be “Too Bad About Tesla,” so for now it well just call it TBA Tesla. There is news about Tesla Motors and the SEC, NHTSA, new features, grand opening invites and gifts.
This week, consumer groups called on Tesla to stop the human autopilot testing insanity.
SEC Investigates
The SEC is investing Tesla for withholding information about the death during its May 18th $2.3 Billion offering. Tesla claims
” t was not until May 18th that a Tesla investigator was able to go to Florida to inspect the car and the crash site and pull the complete vehicle logs from the car, and it was not until the last week of May that Tesla was able to finish its review of those logs and complete its investigation”
Resale Value Not Guaranteed
Tesla has discontinued its ‘Resale Value Guarantee’ (RVG) program as of July 1. RVG allowed Model S and X owners to sell their car to Tesla during the 36 months to 39 months of the ownership for 50% of the base price of the vehicle at the time of the purchase, plus 43% of the original purchase price for all options.
Tesla reduced the base price the Model X to $74,000 by $9,000 with a new option for a 75 kWh battery pack software-limited to 60 kWh. In the future owners can upgrade for $9,000.
New Autopilot Features Too Late?
Technologists say that the Tesla death of Joshua Brown could have been prevented with lidar.
Elon Musk Tweeted that the company is working on ways to improve its Autopilot feature,
“Working on using existing Tesla radar by itself (decoupled from camera) with temporal smoothing to create a coarse point cloud, like lidar. Good thing about radar is that, unlike lidar (which is visible wavelength), it can see through rain, snow, fog and dust. Our radar is using a wavelength of 3.9mm. A good size for both decent resolution and rain penetration.”
The wavelength can see through rain because the wavelength is longer than a normal raindrop.
More Autopilot Crashes Refuted
Meanwhile Musk defended Tesla, “Onboard vehicle logs show Autopilot was turned off in Pennsylvania crash. Moreover, crash would not have occurred if it was on.”
In another accident in Montana, a driver who speaks Mandarin said that autopilot was on during an accident during which a Tesla X rammed into a wooden divider. The Tesla X was on a road without a center divider line. The driver, “Pang” claimed that he didn’t get a message to take over driving. He was given a citation for reckless driving. The car was set in English.
“The data suggests that the driver’s hands were not on the steering wheel, as no force was detected on the steering wheel for over 2 minutes after autosteer was engaged (even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel, will be detected). This is contrary to the terms of use that are agreed to when enabling the feature and the notification presented in the instrument cluster each time it is activated.
As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway.“
Exclusive Gigafactory Party Invites
Telsa has sent out non-transferable invites to Tesla owners sales-refferers, to the Gigafactory Grand Opening’ on July 29. There is also a raffle for Tesla owners to get invited to the event. Attendees will be treated to tours and test rides. Children must be over 8 and 48″ tall.
NHTSA Requested Information
In its investigation of the Brown autopilot death, NHTSA requested the following information from Tesla Motors:
- Data about all vehicles with Tesla’s Autopilot capable vehicles including the VIN, model, model year, total mileage with Autosteer on, total number of “Hands on Wheel” Autosteer warnings records, etc.
- All consumer complaints, field reports, reports involving a crash, property damage claims and lawsuits.
- To describe all past, present or future analyses and studies that pertain to or are possibly related to the alleged defect.
- And to describe any and all modifications to Tesla’s vehicles that may or may not relate to the alleged defect.
Failure to respond with information requested by July 29 or August 26 could result in penalties up to $21,000 a day.
CEO Gifted Tesla
Employees of Gravity Payments have chipped in to buy a new Tesla for Dan Price, the CEO who made headlines for boosting their salaries to a minimum of $70,000 a year — showing their support following his victory last week in a hard-fought court battle with his brother, the company’s minority shareholder.
Gravity Payments claims to offer low-cost merchant credit card services which would seem hard to do if everyone at the company makes $70,000 a year.
https://youtu.be/kgF9ohgylWY