Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

Tesla Model 3, Model Y Dropping Radar Sensors

The newly announced "Tesla Vision" will rely on the car's cameras and onboard computer to control its Autopilot driver-assist system and functions included in the Full Self-Driving package.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36542541/tesla-model-3-model-y-pure-vision/

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Tesla Model 3, Model Y Dropping Radar Sensors

The newly announced "Tesla Vision" will rely on the car's cameras and onboard computer to control its Autopilot driver-assist system and functions included in the Full Self-Driving package.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36542541/tesla-model-3-model-y-pure-vision/

Sounds like a retrograde step - no doubt cost-cutting.

ABrass

Grumpy_chap said:

JKenH said:

Tesla Model 3, Model Y Dropping Radar Sensors

The newly announced "Tesla Vision" will rely on the car's cameras and onboard computer to control its Autopilot driver-assist system and functions included in the Full Self-Driving package.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36542541/tesla-model-3-model-y-pure-vision/

Sounds like a retrograde step - no doubt cost-cutting.

They claim that the Radar isn't useful and it causes more trouble than its worth.

In some respects that makes sense, all those examples of Tesla's driving straight into stationary objects are because the radar units don't have the range needed to identify stationary objects whilst at speed. We'll see.

Grumpy_chap

The article linked even says that the Tesla without radar but with "Tesla Vision" gets less functionality, but they hope to make it work in the future.
How does a camera only system work if dirty, foggy, nighttime, glare, etc?

michaels

Grumpy_chap said:

The article linked even says that the Tesla without radar but with "Tesla Vision" gets less functionality, but they hope to make it work in the future.
How does a camera only system work if dirty, foggy, nighttime, glare, etc?

They are about to move to a whole new automation engine which I guess works better without radar than with.  Why they need to turn the radar off on the current software first is unclear.

TBH I don't know if I want them to succeed with FSD or not - it has always been reliably in the future, the world will be a very different place if it has been solved and is a big indication of where machine learning is going - and I'm not sure we will like the logical end point.

Martyn1981

Grumpy_chap said:

The article linked even says that the Tesla without radar but with "Tesla Vision" gets less functionality, but they hope to make it work in the future.
How does a camera only system work if dirty, foggy, nighttime, glare, etc?

Well LIDAR is a bust in fog and heavy rain, so that's why they never went with that 'training wheels' option, since it has a dead end. And users currently testing it, work within premapped geo-grids.

RADAR can work better, for poor weather conditions, but was causing phantom braking. So that would be it's main advantage over vision and a computer, which is how cars are currently driven with 2x vision and a central processor.

Apparently, but don't take my word for this, camera vision can cope in these circumstances. I thought it was like eyesight, but of course different cameras, when you see what they can see, can be tuned for diferent uses, and different 'levels' of vision, so 'just' cameras can see a lot. So 'clever' cameras (8 of them) will have better vision than a human in poor visbility situations, and I suppose there's a point where conditions get so bad, maybe even an 'advanced' vision vehicle, should stop.

TBH I thought it sounded like a retrograde step, but it's being promoted as an improvement, and has been working fine in testing so far. So, one less technology to go wrong, perhaps $200 per car cost saving, which could mean $200m+ pa soon, and  also one less power drain, since we do need to consider the draw of the computer and chips on the car.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Grumpy_chap said:

The article linked even says that the Tesla without radar but with "Tesla Vision" gets less functionality, but they hope to make it work in the future.
How does a camera only system work if dirty, foggy, nighttime, glare, etc?

They are about to move to a whole new automation engine which I guess works better without radar than with.  Why they need to turn the radar off on the current software first is unclear.

TBH I don't know if I want them to succeed with FSD or not - it has always been reliably in the future, the world will be a very different place if it has been solved and is a big indication of where machine learning is going - and I'm not sure we will like the logical end point.

LOL. I feel the same. I want them to succeed, accidents and injuries should reduce massively with these much better drivers in control, and TAAS could result in around 2/3rds of cars disapearing off the roads ....... but the whole thing scares me quite a lot too.
If Tesla does crack FSD (in the US) this year, or next, then the shockwaves could be enormous, and in a litigous society like that, how long before human drivers get sued for an accident (emphasis on 'accident') because a FSD car wouldn't have made the mistake. Once that happens, insurance rates will rocket, and we'll be pushed out of the driving seat ...... invest in track day events perhaps, and/or 'front of house' conservatory companies?

Martyn1981

China getting closer to 10% BEV's, should happen later this year (fingers crossed), though the annual average may not pass 10% till next year?

10% Plugin Vehicle Share In China!

Plugin vehicles are a hot item in China, having scored over 175,000 registrations last month. That was a 173% jump compared to the same month last year, with BEVs in particular growing at an amazing 204% rate.

April was the second month in a row that the plugin share reached the two-digit mark, hitting 10% this time (8.2% BEV). That kept the 2021 share at 10% (8.1% BEV). Considering that Q1 is usually China’s weakest quarter, we can now safely assume that the local plugin market share will end north of the two-digit baseline this year, and the total tally of the year will exceed 2 million deliveries.

JKenH

Opinion: Has Formula E scored a freak own goal?

Major miscalculation by officials could damage reputation of EVs.

Formula E has come so far since its early days: the cars are faster and more powerful and can run for much longer (remember mid-race car swaps?), and it’s that shop window of EV progress that attracts manufacturers. It has taken considerable time to build up some credibility – and the events of two weekends ago dealt a real blow to that.

Now, plenty of combustion-engined racing cars have run out of fuel late in races or suffered other embarrassing technical issues. But that’s not what happened here. This wasn’t a failure of EV battery technology – but those who saw a bunch of EVs all running out of power before they reached their destination might believe that it was, and quite understandably.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motorsport-news-formula-e/opinion-has-formula-e-scored-freak-own-goal

Martyn1981

Jaw(s) dropping PV and batt and BEV deployment.

Electric Buses Get Solar Charging & Battery Backup On Martha’s Vineyard

The Vineyard Transportation Authority this week announced it will add 4 more electric buses to its fleet in June, bringing the total to 16 — 50% of its fleet. But that’s not the big news. We all know that electric buses can slash emissions compared to their diesel powered cousins and are less expensive to operate and maintain. What is newsworthy about the VTA electric bus program is that it will use electricity from solar panels to keep them charged. It has covered the roof of its operations center in Edgartown with enough panels to provide 700 kW of electricity. Since the buses travel up to 300 miles a day and need to run their heaters constantly during the winter, wireless charging stations are being install at several locations along their routes to add range while they are stopped to pickup and drop off passengers.

But even that’s not the end of the story. VTA has also added a 1.5 MWh battery storage facility to soak up all that electricity and use it to power its 12 recharging stations overnight. The system is the result of a collaboration between Arup, PXiSE, and Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. Half the funding for the project came from a public-private partnership between VTA and Enel X. The other half came from the Federal Transit Administration, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, according to the Vineyard Gazette.

Thanks to the battery storage component, the microgrid can be decoupled from the electrical grid during outages and used to provide emergency power locally.