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Who knew, Tesla Autopilot has a human collision avoidance system

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Tesla released arguably one of the biggest over-the-air software updates in its company history when it introduced Version 8.0 with updated Autopilot in September. Not to be confused with the more recent announcement that new Model S and Model X vehicles are equipped with next generation “hardware 2” capable of Full Self-Driving, Autopilot under Version 8.0 leveraged two-year-old hardware to issue enhancements in drivability and safety through advancements in radar signal processing.

By placing more emphasis on input from the vehicle’s forward-facing radar, Tesla Autopilot was able to detect vehicle activity from two cars ahead and better react to sudden emergency braking events. A recent test using a Model X while trailing two vehicles – the furthest vehicle would simulate an emergency braking situation – demonstrated that Autopilot was able to automatically react to activity beyond what its human driver could see.

But how does v8.0 Autopilot fare against activity from a non-vehicle – let’s say, a human obstacle? Previous tests put together by Tesla owner and YouTuber KmanAuto attempted to see just that. Using a very trusting friend, Kman was able to demonstrate Autopilot’s lack of ability to account for pedestrians when it comes to emergency braking under version 7.0.

Back at it again, and with the same friend Mike Anthony, the duo staged seven separate tests to see how the latest Version 8.0 Autopilot, using radar-based technology supplemented by the front-facing camera, was able to handle situations involving a human obstacle.

Tesla Autopilot under Version 8.0 vs. Human (Mike)

Before we jump into the results of the various tests, we’d like to note that Teslarati in no way endorses or recommends this type of stunt, or any activity of similar nature.

We’ve provided the full video here with outcome of the results summarized below. Be sure to also check out the video from Mike’s perspective.

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Test 1 – Tesla @ 20 mph vs. Human in middle of lane

Description: Vehicle was able to detect Mike and gradually come to a complete stop on its own with no driver input. Display did not show an object. No human collision warning appeared.

Video of Test 1 (open link in new window to jump to test)

Test 2 – Tesla @ 20 mph vs. Human walking in front of the car

Description: Vehicle was able to detect Mike walking into the car’s path of travel and bring itself to a complete stop. As Mike walked backwards and away from the vehicle, Autopilot Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) was able to keep its distance to Mike and proceed forward as Mike inched backwards.

Video of Test 2

Test 3 – Tesla @ 20 mph vs. Human walking from side of road in front of car and then off the road again

Description: Vehicle was able to detect Mike walking into the car’s path of travel and bring itself to a complete stop. As Mike walked off to the side of the road, TACC resumed.

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Video of Test 3

Test 4 – Tesla @ 20 mph vs. Human walking in front of the car

Description: Same as Test 2.

Video of Test 4

Test 5 – Tesla @ 30 mph vs. Human jogging across all lanes in front of vehicle

Description: This is the first sighting of a human collision warning indicator. Vehicle detects Mike and attempts to hard brake“In the interest of safety I helped [brake] it, the car gave me a collision alert and it also applied the brakes.”, says Kman.

Kman indicates that the vehicle likely would not have stopped in time to prevent hitting Mike but it would have severely lessened the force of impact and possibly lessened the severity of  human injury.

Video of Test 5

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Test 6 – Tesla @ 25 mph vs. Human walking in front of the car

Description: Vehicle was able to detect Mike walking into the car’s path of travel and bring itself to a sudden stop and avoid impact.

Video of Test 6

Test 7 – Tesla @ 35 mph vs. Human standing directly in front of moving car

Description: Vehicle was able to detect Mike standing before the car and bring itself to a quick stop though no visual warning was seen on the display. It would appear the human collision warning only appears with objects that are non-stationary and enter the vehicle’s path of travel.

Video of Test 7

Conclusion

The test demonstrates Tesla’s remarkable ability to continuously improve upon its Autopilot suite of features through changes to its set of algorithms driven largely by data collected through the company’s fleet learning program. The test is also significant in that Tesla was able to dramatically improve the safety on its vehicles – now capable of performing emergency braking events when a human is detected – purely over-the-air and with no hardware improvements whatsoever.

With Autopilot 2.0 consisting of seven more cameras and enhanced long range sonar sensors fed from billions of miles worth of driving data, it’s not a question of if Tesla can reach full Level 5 autonomy, but one of when.

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Gene has been obsessed with cars since before he could legally sit in the front seat. Writer, researcher, unofficial CS support, accountant, native suit guy when needed, and overall stick poker. He approaches every story the way he approaches a road trip: with too much enthusiasm, not enough planning, and a surprisingly good outcome. gene@teslarati.com

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Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

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Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

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Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

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Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

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This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

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Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

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neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

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The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

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