To hear the Tesla Motors faithful tell it, the Silicon Valley-based electric car company is single-handedly steering the future of the automotive industry, forcing Detroit’s Big Three to get serious about pure-electric propulsion, and rolling out the closest thing to a fully-autonomous driving system that’s available today. Yet as seriously as Tesla seems to be taking self-driving car technology – the automaker builds each new car with the hardware necessary to unlock full autonomy at some later date – it logged no autonomous test miles in California last year.
General Motors, meanwhile, logged the second-most test miles of any company: 131,676, according to InsideEVs.
And GM’s Level-5 autonomy timeline certainly doesn’t seem any more ambitious than Tesla Motors’; the Detroit company says it plans to put a fully-self-driving Chevrolet Bolt EV on the road by 2019, initially for use in ride-hailing fleets – not as a vehicle for individual purchase. Tesla’s latest projections put its autonomous system’s release at about the same time, although that system will be available for individual use.
For its part, Tesla Motors says it’s been testing “via simulation, in laboratories, on test tracks, and on public roads” in other locations, according to a company report. That may be so, but for one of the first automakers with public autonomous testing permission from the California DMV to log zero miles for the entire year seems odd, especially as the company is headquartered in the state.
Either way, that General Motors logged so many test miles by contrast – nearly 10k more miles than what it logged in 2016 – suggests that the Detroit automaker is at least as serious about making self-driving cars a reality as the Silicon Valley company.
Comments
They must have self driving testers somewhere therefore the most likely scenario is they intentional do not test in California because it has the reporting requirements…In addition to miles, you have to report all accidents and disengagements…
Wonder how these vehicles will handle snow and icy roads. Today I had to go down a narrow 2 way road with ice covered snow on my side and cars parked on the opposite lane. Waited for oncoming traffic to pass before going down what became essentially a one lane road. It’ll be interesting to see how autonomous cars handle weird situations like this. I’m sure it can be “coded” into them or “learned” but what about when snow/rain interferes with the sensors and cameras?
Tesla also advertises that their vehicles will be Level 5-capable via a software update, despite the fact Level 5 *mandates* LiDAR – something which no Tesla vehicle has.
Given the most recent ratings, their autonomous capabilities are ranked dead last.
No one has driven across the US in fully autonomous mode, many have done it “mostly” in autonomous…Tesla promised they would do it two years ago but had a very messy divorce with Mobile Eye and had to start over from scratch and they now stated they will do this drive in 3-6 months…Even Tesla’s biggest fans wouldn’t be surprised if it’s further delayed, the point is who will be first and if its Tesla will they do it with production vehicles without LIDAR…
GM has the first assembly line dedicated to the AV Bolt EV, and has a special model prototype with no driver controls ready for manufacturing. GM is waiting for a special release or permission from the NHTSA and state laws to drive this special AV on public roads. GM is doing this legally. I have not seen any legal news from Tesla, only bad news.
“GM has first assembly line dedicated to the AV”, while technically correct, if you watch the video they essentially take a fully assembled Bolt, move it to the AV line and add or remove (front fascia) components by hand…Do note these are not production intended cars, unless they’ve updated them, the bulk of the computers are mounted in the rear cargo area which takes up almost all the room, we don’t know how much power it uses, you have large roof arrays and we know it would be very expensive to purchase or insurance…