Computers at the controls: Tesla to build self-driving technology into all its cars

Tesla will build self-driving technology into all the electric cars it makes so it can gather data on whether it is safer than having people in control. The electric car maker says its new onboard computer will have 40 times the processing power of the previous generation. Chief executive Elon Musk said it would be “basically a super-computer in a car,” far more advanced than the Autopilot technology available in its cars to date. It will run in shadow mode, collecting information from an array of sensors with twice the range of those in the current vehicles and performing 12 trillion operations a second.

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Tesla is among the car-makers leading the way on autonomous driving, although its Autopilot feature is under investigation after being linked to several serious crashes. However, Mr Musk has set the goal of making self-driving cars 10 times safer than those with a human at the controls. Tesla plans to calibrate the system using feedback from millions of miles of real-world driving before enabling the new hardware. By the end of 2017 a Tesla would be able to drive in full autonomous mode from Los Angeles to New York “without the need for a single touch” on the wheel, said Mr Musk.

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