Tesla Increases Data Collection From Customer Vehicles For Autonomous Driving

Starting April, Tesla has been collecting data from customer vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Hardware Kit 2 (from those customers who gave their persmission, of course). So far the data collection was restricted on video sequences from the eight cameras, but now Tesla seems to have expanded its data collection efforts.

A thread in the Teslerati forum shows that Tesla is now accessing driver interventions in Autopilot mode, road classifications, and the car’s speed in curves. Driver interventions detail when a driver intervened, hit the brakes or used the Autopilot stalk. With that data Tesla seems to get an understanding the conditions that lead to steering failures.

Those efforts come only shortly after tensions in Tesla’s Autopilot team have surfaced. A few engineers have left the company believing that Elon Musk’s announced goals for the Autopilot where too aggressive and risky. Musk is still aiming at demonstrating a fully autonomous drive of a production vehicle and of this year from Los Angeles to New York.

This article has also been published in German.