The recall, which is part of a larger investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into Tesla’s self-driving systems, is the most serious action taken against the electric carmaker so far.

It affects a total of 362 758 vehicles. According to the announcement, these include “certain Model S, Model X, Model 3, 2017-2023 and Model Y, 2020-2023 vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) software or in the process of being installed,” Engadget reports.

Such decisions raise questions about CEO Elon Musk’s claims that he can prove to regulators that cars equipped with “full self-driving” are safer than humans and that humans almost never have to touch the controls.

“FSD beta software that allows a vehicle to exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash,” the agency said in documents.

The documents, posted on the safety agency’s website Thursday, say Tesla will fix the problems with an online software update in the coming weeks. The documents say Tesla is performing the recall but disagrees with the agency’s analysis of the problem.

The system, which is being tested on public roads by up to 400,000 Tesla owners, can perform unsafe actions such as driving straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs, or driving through an intersection during a yellow traffic signal without proper attention, the NHTSA says. The problems happen in “certain rare circumstances,” the agency says.

In a statement, NHTSA said it discovered the problems during tests conducted as part of an investigation into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” and “Autopilot” software, which takes over some driving tasks. The investigation remains open and the recall does not cover the full scope of what NHTSA is examining, the agency said.

Despite the “Full Self-Driving” and “Autopilot” designations, Tesla says on its website that the cars can’t drive themselves and owners should be ready to intervene at any time.

“Cameras can miss a lot of things,” Rajkumar said. “These are not straightforward issues to fix. If they could have fixed it, they would have fixed it a long time back.”,

said Raj Rajkumar, a professor of computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

The recall is another in a list of problems that Tesla has with the U.S. government. In January, the company disclosed that the U.S. Justice Department had requested documents from Tesla about Full Self-Driving and Autopilot.

SEEDS Capital catalyses smart investments into innovative Singapore-based early-stage tech startups, through working with co-investment partners.

1Derlife Growth and SEEDS Capital’s capital splash into an automated electric vehicles provider in Singapore follows investment from Momentum and Yinson, to bolster MooVita on its journey to speed up the rollout of the company’s driverless solutions in Singapore, Malaysia and beyond. Yinson’s signed a term sheet with GreenTech Malaysia Alliances Sdn. Bhd. to accelerate the development of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in Malaysia to accelerate Malaysia’s transition to a more environmentally sustainable transport network.

MooVita has pioneered the development of driverless software solutions deployable worldwide. With the vision to revolutionise urban transportation in an era defined by electrification and automation, its component-based software is a cost-effective solution designed to convert regular cars into self-driving vehicles for applications such as first/last-mile transportation, logistic transportation and utility solutions. Established in 2016 with headquarters in Singapore and offices in Malaysia and India, MooVita plans to bring its products to Europe while expanding and strengthening its footprint in Asia-Pacific. Gregory Lee, Principal of 1Derlife Growth, said:

“1Derlife Growth is excited to join MooVita’s journey. The electric and autonomous vehicle market has enormous potential. Current estimates suggest the industry will grow at a CAGR of 22% hitting US$60bn in 2028. However, I believe it will be much faster than this, thanks to a large and growing consumer and enterprise market. MooVita has demonstrated its strategic position in these two fast-growing segments, and we are sure they will play a pivotal role expanding EV growth in Singapore, Malaysia and beyond.”

Driven by Singapore’s push to automatise the public transportation system and accelerate towards a low-carbon future has granted the homegrown EV makers a first-mover advantage. As a result, MooVita is in a prime position in the global race to expedite the world’s goals of creating clean, safe and efficient urban transit networks. Leveraging its green and environmentally friendly technologies to unlock EV and AV vehicles possibilities in urban settings, MooVita has demonstrated its vast market potential and is on track to become one of the leaders in the global EV and AV tech space.

Gelsinger described the situation as both a massive challenge and enormous opportunity – and the perfect time for Intel to step up to the plate.

“This new era of sustained demand for semiconductors needs bold, big thinking,” said Gelsinger. “As CEO of Intel, I have the great privilege to be in a position to marshal the energies of 116,000 employees and a massive chip-design and manufacturing ecosystem, to meet the demand.”

Intel Investment in Europe

To make his point, Gelsinger reminded the audience that Intel has plans to build at least two new leading-edge semiconductor factories in Europe with plans for future investments that could reach 80 billion euros over the next decade. He also detailed elements of the company’s previously announced IDM 2.0 strategy and shared how those programs will apply specifically for the automotive and mobility industries in the European Union.

Intel Foundry Services, announced in March, is actively engaged in discussions with potential customers in Europe – including automotive companies and their suppliers. Today, the majority of automotive chips are manufactured using legacy process technologies. As automotive applications transition to rely on more high-performance processing, chips are also beginning to migrate to more advanced process technologies. Intel is partnering with leading automotive players and committing significant resources in Europe to help drive this transition around the globe in the coming years. The company announced plans today to establish committed foundry capacity at its fab in Ireland and launch the Intel Foundry Services Accelerator to help automotive chip designers transition to advanced nodes. For this, the company is standing up a new design team and offering both custom and industry-standard intellectual property (IP) to support the unique needs of automotive customers.

Mobileye: From the Garage to the Streets

To emphasize Intel’s commitment to the promising future of self-driving, Gelsinger welcomed Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua via a video segment. Shashua outlined Mobileye’s approach to both the driver assistance and autonomous driving opportunities. He described the sensing configuration, which aims for both scale and safety at all levels of autonomy, and stated that, like Intel, Mobileye shares “the dream of autonomy – anywhere, anytime, for everybody,” and is leading the industry with solutions that will help realize those dreams.

Keynote attendees were treated to the unveiling of Mobileye’s first production AV equipped with the Mobileye Drive self-driving system and bearing the MoovitAV services branding.

“Mobileye is passionate about bringing autonomous vehicles to consumers,” Shashua said. “The new Mobileye AV, accessible through the MoovitAV service, is an important milestone on the way to a driverless world.”

Speaking in front of a largely German audience, Gelsinger emphasized Germany’s first-mover status on AV regulation, citing the law passed earlier this year that enables commercial operation of driverless AV services. The new law enables Mobileye to bring autonomous ride-hailing into operation with Munich-based Sixt SE starting in 2022. Intel and Mobileye believe that autonomous vehicles will take off in places with the right regulatory framework in place, and Germany’s action provides a strong blueprint for other countries to enable the industry to move toward the promise of full autonomy.

IEEE AV Safety Standard in Final Stages

Intel Fellow and Mobileye Vice President of Automotive Standards Jack Weast joined Gelsinger on stage to discuss the recently completed draft of IEEE 2846. Expected to be an approved standard by the end of the year, IEEE 2846 will be the first AV safety standard to address the question,

“How safe is safe enough?” 

Weast explained that IEEE 2846 was initiated following Mobileye’s pioneering Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) model published in 2017 that formalizes the reasonably foreseeable assumptions humans make every day and that AVs need to make in order to balance risk and usefulness.

“IEEE 2846 will give regulators the essential tool they need to welcome AVs to roads everywhere,” said Weast.

“The office in Sofia is quite an important developing center for Uber”- Ivan Atanasov comments. “Everyday the company makes 16 million travels and every month 98 million of our platform’s users rely on us. What we do touches real people and makes life better for millions of other people who rely on the platform to support their families.”

In his new role, Ivan will take responsibility for the innovative development of the products, created in Sofia, as well as for the enlargement of the engineering team.

“Sofia becoming one of the two main technological Uber centers in Europe is my main goal, as well as increasing the number of colleagues here to 250 in the next 3 years.” – Ivan Atanasov shares.

Uber Engineering Sofia was founded in 2014 and was one of the first technological offices of the company outside of San Francisco.

Here in Bulgaria, the Uber team is operating FinTech services, supporting payments and guaranteeing legality. There are 80 people who are currently working here. We are planning to increase their number with 20 more by the end of the year, and at least 50 more in 2022.

The v9 edition of its FSD beta has been trained on a supercomputer called “Dojo“. This system solely depends on the cameras and sensors on Tesla vehicles – a system announced as Tesla Vision. According to Elon Musk, this update is a dramatic improvement over AutoPilot, the ADAS system that Musk has hyped as a self-driving solution. Interestingly, AutoPilot used radars as well, but with Tesla Vision, computer vision algorithms are trained on supercomputers including a new one which the automaker believes could be the 5th fastest in the world.

What’s interesting is that Tesla doesn’t talk much about what’s improved but rather for once, is being quite diligent in informing its users that this system is still decidedly beta software. The company notes in the release notes that come with the software update:

“Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent. When Full Self-Driving is enabled your vehicle will make lane changes off-highway, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make a left and right turn. Use Full Self-Driving in limited BETA only if you will pay constant attention to the road, and be prepared to act immediately, especially around blind corners, crossing intersections, and in narrow driving situations.“

Recently, Musk described the new interface which made its debut first on the new Tesla Model S Plaid, as the “mind of car” interface. This interface is also slated to come to the Model 3 and Y. Right now it is shipping this feature to its higher-end vehicles, the Model S and X. The company commented in the release notes describing the new feature:

“The driving visualisation has been improved to better support Full Self-Driving capabilities. When Full Self-Driving is engaged, the instrument panel will display an expanded visualisation to show additional surrounding information. The apps from the instrument panel will be temporarily dismissed and the driving speed, Autopilot availability, Autopilot set speed and detected speed limit will move to the bottom of the instrument panel.”

Right now this beta programme is still not open to all Tesla users, but instead, it counts around 2,000 users. Mind you, this number also includes a number of Tesla employees. For once, even Musk reiterates the need to always be “paranoid” while using this feature. He, however, has been saying that is a leap forward in self-driving technology, something that’s achieved through impressive on-device processing capabilities with things like the Tesla self-driving chips, algorithms being trained on supercomputers and data collected from the wealth of Tesla cars that are already on the road. Musk believes this is a scalable approach instead of a system that involves expensive hardware like LiDARs and radars and then road tests  – something which many self-driving companies are pursuing.

Despite this, Musk and his team reiterate that the FSD v9 update may do the wrong thing at the worst time. Though, the company claims that most known issues are addressed, though since it is beta software there could be unknown issues which is why people need to be careful. Many videos of the new FSD v9 update have popped up on YouTube which shows how it operates; most people have been underwhelmed.

In pursuit of this milestone and a future of safer roads, Motional set a high bar for the industry. The company’s driverless operation follows decades of innovation, 1.5 million miles, and a two-year self-imposed safety evaluation process that took hundreds of employees more than 100,000 hours to complete. During this process, Motional proactively sought external review; TUV SUD, a world-leading independent technical service provider with extensive experience assessing driverless technology, was given access to the company’s proprietary systems, technology, and operations. Upon completion of its assessment, TUV SUD provided Motional with a first-of-its-kind endorsement to operate with an empty driver’s seat.  The state of Nevada granted Motional permission to do so last November.

Robotaxi Fleet Provider

Following extensive progress in 2020, Motional has firmly established itself as the ridesharing industry’s robotaxi fleet provider of choice, and is uniquely positioned to commercialize driverless technology. It is the sole driverless technology provider to have partnerships with two ridesharing leaders, including an agreement to launch the largest robotaxi deployment for a major ridesharing network.

“Not all driverless systems are created equal. Ours is the product of decades of innovation, a relentless commitment to safety and process, more than a million miles of testing, and a rigorous external review,” commented Karl Iagnemma, President and CEO, Motional. “We’re one of the first companies in the world to go driverless. It’s a significant step on our path to making driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality, and a proud day for Motional.”

Raising the Bar on Safety

Building public trust in driverless vehicles is critical. The technology has the power to save millions of lives, but for this potential to become a reality, the general public must trust and adopt it. Motional’s process went the extra mile to demonstrate the safety of its systems, and build consumer confidence.

During its 18-month review of Motional’s systems, TUV SUD’s experts interviewed employees,  reviewed detailed safety architecture designs, analyzed testing processes and results, scrutinized training procedures, and reviewed the qualifications and skill of the team. The resulting first-of-its-kind endorsement is a testament to the soundness of Motional’s technology. It supports Motional’s driverless testing in its operational design domain, with a safety steward in the passenger seat. Safety stewards monitor the route, and have the ability to stop the vehicle. They have not had to do so during Motional’s driverless operations.

This external review was just one part of Motional’s industry-leading safety evaluation process, which the company detailed in its Voluntary Safety Self-Assessment (VSSA). Throughout the process, Motional covered enough distance to circumnavigate the world multiple times. This testing was in addition to the 1.5 million miles Motional had already driven across a diverse set of road environments, cities, and vehicle platforms.

Testing took place on public roads with a safety operator, as well as on closed courses with and without a safety operator.  Motional vehicles navigated thousands of challenging scenarios.  These involved:

• Human-driven cars and other autonomous vehicles
• Pedestrians, cyclists, and other road actors
• Busy intersections and unprotected turns
• A wide range of traffic and road conditions
• Safely-staged edge cases on closed courses

At the Intersection of Technological and Commercial Capability

Developing an advanced driverless system that can safely navigate roads is a monumental accomplishment, but it’s only part of the equation. The technology must also have clear, scalable paths to market to fulfill its potential — and Motional’s commercial ridesharing experience and capability are unparalleled.

In 2023, Motional and Lyft will launch a scalable, fully-driverless, multimarket service — the largest agreement of its kind for a major ridesharing network, and a quantum leap forward for an already successful partnership. Lyft and Motional operate the world’s longest-standing commercial robotaxi service, and have provided more than 100,000 rides with zero at-fault incidents.

Motional is a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers offering smart mobility solutions and Aptiv, one of the industry’s most innovative technology providers. Motional is a driverless technology pioneer, responsible for many industry firsts. This latest milestone brings the company one step closer to a future of safer transportation.

“President Trump granted a full pardon to Anthony Levandowski. This pardon is strongly supported by James Ramsey, Peter Thiel, Miles Ehrlich, Amy Craig, Michael Ovitz, Palmer Luckey, Ryan Petersen, Ken Goldberg, Mike Jensen, Nate Schimmel, Trae Stephens, Blake Masters, and James Proud, among others. Mr. Levandowski is an American entrepreneur who led Google’s efforts to create self-driving technology. Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing judge called him a “brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs.” Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good”, is said in the Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency.

Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, which was quickly acquired by Uber for $680 million, according to CNET. These actions set off a chain of events that led to Google’s autonomous vehicle unit, Waymo, suing Uber over alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets.

Photocredit: Automotivenews