Marco Arment:
A few Tesla vehicles have had accidents with Autopilot enabled recently, and I’ve gotten countless questions about these incidents and the nature of Autopilot from people who aren’t Tesla owners. Tesla and the media haven’t clearly communicated what these features do (and don’t do) to the public, so I’ll try to help in whatever small way I can as a Model S owner for a few months so far.
This is a terrific walkthrough on Tesla’s autopilot, a glimpse into what’s coming for cars in general, as well as a reality check on where autonomous driving stands. Things are changing fast as we move towards autonomous vehicles all around us.
I want to get a feel for this, myself. Our Tampa Tesla dealer has an X for test drives, and my wife and I are going to check it out. We love the X for all of its features, including the falcon-wing doors.
I think Tesla Autopilot is going to show that Google was smart to avoid Level 3 automated driving and exclusively focus on Level 4. It s inevitable that in a Level 3 car, the human will not be paying attention at precisely the moment when attention is needed most.