Neither Tesla alone – nor Mobileye alone – has a corner on leadership in autonomous driving.
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The accident highlighted the friction between Mobileye and Tesla Motors, an issue that was brought further into light by George Hotz of comma.ai.
Musk said he imagined it would eventually be most efficient to place a gigafactory on every continent where Tesla products were sold, and considers the factory itself a product the Tesla would continue to refine and improve with every iteration.
Tesla Motors has opened a part of its massive Gigafactory, where the electric carmaker plans to house most of its manufacturing process under one roof, while reducing costs and allowing the company to vastly increase production.
Responding to the announcement, Tesla said it was “transitioning to internally developed software for the camera portion of Autopilot“. He added that the EV maker is “laser-focused” on achieving full autonomous capability on one integrated platform. Despite the fatal incident of auto-drive mode of a Tesla Model S vehicle, the company is getting steady profit from the autonomous domain as well.
“The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver’s hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected”, Tesla said.
BlueStar Indexes, which manages a US-listed Israeli tech fund, said on Tuesday that Tesla accounted for less than 1 percent of Mobileye’s current revenue and about 2 percent of projected 2019 sales. Us parting ways was somewhat inevitable. According to DIY self-driving expert George Hotz, the system that Mobileye was making is quite easy to reproduce and most probably Elon Musk and his team would start building their own version of the it soon. He said, “there is much at stake here”, to the company’s reputation and to the industry at large, and that it is not in the interest of the company to continue collaboration with Musk’s EV company.
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Following the crash, five investigators from the NTSB arrived on the scene and used advanced three-dimensional laser scanning technology to conduct an in-depth analysis into the crash location, the damaged Model S as well as the trailer it crash into. Its fifth generation processor EyeQ5 will reportedly be used by Volvo in its DriveMe self-driving vehicle pilot program.
