UPDATED 23:36 EST / JUNE 10 2018

EMERGING TECH

New self-driving features coming to Tesla as NTSB releases interim crash report

Troubled electric-car maker Tesla may be set to deliver new, fully autonomous vehicle features later this summer.

Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that the company would release a new version of its software with “full self-driving features” in August. The tweet came days after the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary findings into the fatal crash of a Model X in March.

Dubbed by Musk as “Tesla Version 9,” the new software will likely only be available for Tesla vehicles with the Autopilot 2.0 features — that is, vehicles manufactured after October 2016 with the “Hardware 2” stack that Tesla claimed provides the necessary equipment to allow full self-driving capability in the future.

What Musk means by “full self-driving features,” though, is another question. Ubergizmo argued that it’s unlikely that Tesla’s cars can suddenly be transformed into fully autonomous vehicles and that term could simply be a fancy marketing term for new features as opposed to its literal meaning.

Meanwhile, the NTSB in a preliminary finding into the crash in Mountain View. California, in March said the driver of the vehicle —  as in the fatal crash of a Tesla Model S in 2016 — did not have his hands on the vehicle at the time of the crash. Hence he was not in control of it, nor was he paying attention to the road at the time.

As per the vehicle’s programming, the Tesla provided two visual alerts and one auditory alert for the driver to place his hands on the steering wheel prior to the crash. The driver followed them until taking his hands off the wheel again.

However, the investigation also found that the vehicle not only began a left steering movement seven seconds before the crash, which resulted in its crashing directly into a “attenuator” road divider, it also speeded up at the same time. “There was no braking or evasive steering detected prior to impact,” the NTSB noted.

Tesla was cleared of responsibility for the first fatal accident when the NTSB ruled that the driver should have been paying attention to the road with his hands on the steering wheel. But a similar outcome here is not guaranteed, not least because the NTSB and Tesla are no longer cooperating on the investigation.

“The NTSB continues to work with the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Transportation to collect and analyze data, including all pertinent information relating to the vehicle operations and roadway configuration,” the NTSB said in its report. “All aspects of the crash remain under investigation as the NTSB determines the probable cause, with the intent of issuing safety recommendations to prevent similar crashes.”

Image: NTSB

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