What We’re Reading
Tesla ordered to cough up data for Autopilot probe or face heavy fines (The Register, July 6, 2023)
In the latest skirmish between NHTSA and Tesla regarding the regulator’s ongoing investigation into the safety of Autopilot, NHTSA issued a letter to Tesla last week requesting more details about Autopilot’s effectiveness and its ability to engage drivers appropriately, which has been the subject of a probe by the agency since 2021.
“Failure to respond promptly and fully” could lead to civil penalties of up to $26,315 per violation per day for a maximum of $131.6 million, said the letter from Tanya Topka, acting director of the Office of Defects Investigation, which set July 19 as the response deadline.
Among the voluminous data requested by NHTSA are details regarding “all modifications or changes” to Autopilot for vehicles produced between 2014 and 2023; including the date of the modification, the reason for the change, whether the vehicles have a cabin camera installed, when the vehicle was admitted into Tesla’s full-self-driving beta, and the software, firmware and hardware versions of each and every Tesla that falls into its investigative purview.
Given that this data requests encompasses an estimated 830,000 vehicles, it will be interesting to see how or when Tesla responds.
Volkswagen will start testing self-driving cars in Austin as it moves on from Argo AI (CNBC, July 6, 2023)
In the wake of its decision to move on from Argo AI, Volkswagen announced last week that it will start deploying its ID.Buzz electric vans in Austin, Texas later this month. The vans will be equipped with autonomous-driving systems developed with Mobileye. For now, these vehicles will have human safety drivers on board during testing and will be “geofenced” in areas that have been carefully pre-mapped for autonomous operation.
“We selected Austin as the first U.S. hub, as the city has a track record for embracing innovation and offers a conducive climate for the testing of autonomous vehicles,” said Katrin Lohmann, the executive leading Volkswagen’s self-driving efforts in the U.S.
Volkswagen hopes to expand this testing operation to at least four more U.S. cities over the next three years as it continues to focus on developing fleet management technology it can offer to other ride-sharing or delivery businesses.
The real reason Tesla is letting rival car companies use its EV charging stations (Business Insider, July 1, 2023)
One reason Tesla may be opening the gates to its previously cordoned-off Supercharger network may be as simple as what is quickly becoming as valuable as gold in the connected car market: data, and lots of it. Tesla reportedly uses cellular and WiFi data ports to collect what one investigation called a “hoard” of data about any car that plugs into its Supercharger network, tracking a plethora of data points from vehicle performance to driver preferences. By letting competitors freely access its chargers, Tesla appears poised and capable of siphoning off this critical and highly valuable data under the guise of charging collaborations.
In addition to affording Tesla with invaluable insight into its competitors’ EV specifications and performance, this brilliant move may also provide Tesla with yet another lucrative revenue stream in the form of vehicle data sales, which some predict could be worth more than $800 billion by the end of the decade.
“I suspect that both Ford and GM have set up ways to prevent Tesla from directly harvesting ownership information,” says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst with Gartner. “But Tesla could probably figure it out using other means. The data value is mostly internal to Tesla in terms of competitive intelligence."