Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts

06 July 2025

Robot on Wheels


table-driven matrices featured as a chessboard

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Tesla Model 3

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

Tesla Model X

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out, behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

Tesla Model Y

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Tesla Model 3

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

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