Connect with us

Lifestyle

Self-driving car lanes are coming: Will they help or hinder Level 5 autonomy progress?

Published

6 years ago

on

Tesla’s long-term Robotaxi plans require Level 5 autonomous driving, i.e., no humans involved, and it certainly sounds like things are moving along quite well. CEO Elon Musk has been chatting about the Full Self-Driving progress on Twitter lately, and some recently published patent applications by the all-electric carmaker have revealed even more details about the machine learning going into an Autopilot overhaul. However, Tesla’s self-driving competitors have another approach to autonomy in mind, and it involves infrastructure restructuring in a major way.

The State of Michigan recently announced plans to create transport lanes dedicated to self-driving vehicles via a public-private partnership project. Over the next 24 months, a study will be conducted to explore the opportunity and viability of building a 40-mile corridor of this type between Downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor. The company chosen to lead the effort is Cavnue, a subsidiary of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Cavnue’s plans involve a digital model of a roadway that analyzes road conditions in real-time, shares information, and provides proactive guidance to autonomous vehicles and their (optional) drivers. Based on their published promo materials, this is achieved using layers of technologies like sensors, specialized road markings and signage, and signal hubs for transmitting information to vehicles. Essentially, rather than rely on a vehicle’s onboard self-driving software to analyze, predict, and respond to its environment, this connected infrastructure is supposed to provide that data instead – or supplement it heavily anyhow. It’s also supposed to enable the connected cars to talk to one another so coordinated responses like simultaneous braking, slowing, etc. are possible based on environmental factors from the larger infrastructure system.

As part of their role in Michigan, Cavnue will be drawing on an advisory committee with representatives from Ford, GM, Argo AI, Arrival, BMW, Honda, Toyota, TuSimple, and Waymo (also a subsidiary of Alphabet).

Both Tesla and Rivian are notably absent from the project’s advisory mentions, which isn’t surprising considering their competitor status through the Alphabet-Waymo connection. But if the lanes are going to involve both long hauler transportation and consumer vehicles, i.e., the Tesla Semi and Models S, 3, X, Y, etc., it must be assumed that the missing companies will eventually get on board with the overall connectivity imagined.

Could efforts like this affect the future of Level 5 autonomy in a negative way? Does it force companies like Tesla and Rivian into a self-driving standard dictated by, say, Waymo? Cavnue’s proposal says its standards will be “open” and “OEM-neutral” if implemented, so it could be a matter of a software install option for owners living in areas with these dedicated lanes. The ability for a competitor’s software to control their vehicles, though, might be a little too big an ask. Or would it?

Advertisement
-

Tesla is already under an atomic microscope anytime something goes wrong and Autopilot is (or isn’t) involved. What happens when Autopilot is taking a back seat to another OEM’s self-driving software that’s been adopted by a local government? Will that create a code mess to sort through for investigators? How would liability be handled? What if two updates didn’t play well together – something really common in phone and computer apps after OS updates?

Tesla’s Robotaxi won’t need a steering wheel. (Image: Tesla)

“The vision for the corridor is intended to create lanes that are purpose built to accelerate and enhance the full potential of CAVs [connected autonomous vehicles] and move people,” Michigan’s official announcement stated. Getting governments even more involved in the self-driving push is inevitable and already presents one of the biggest obstacles to its adoption. It’s clear from the Great Lakes State’s initiative that this involvement is also intended to be helpful – first by isolating the autonomous cars, then by supplementing their capabilities, and finally by controlling their movements for safety’s sake.

Of course, cars talking to one another isn’t a new or unexpected idea. Even centralizing the information that’s being shared, as proposed in Cavnue’s system, doesn’t seem to impose or hinder anything generally. A legal authority adopting a self-driving standard, though, is another matter. This concern assumes that the authority in question makes it a mandatory standard since millions, perhaps billions, would be invested into these dedicated roadways. What good would they be if the majority of autonomous vehicles that used them were, say, Teslas that don’t bother with the Waymo-developed system?

Then there’s the question of handicap. Once a system is in place to centralize all the environment information self-driving vehicles are supposed to respond to, will it make it more difficult for companies like Tesla to gain local regulatory approval to use their software? Will it disincentivize other companies from improving their software since there’s a centralized program available (or mandatory)? Level 5 autonomy is no easy feat, nor is it cheap to develop. Car maker’s invest in it expecting a return – like in the case of Tesla’s Robotaxi plan.

Cavnue paints a really safe and pretty picture for the future of self-driving vehicles: Less congestion, faster movement at closer distances, more capacity in the same space, reducing or eliminating choke points, etc. But it also seems to require a lot of cooperation from those who don’t necessarily stand to gain from that cooperation.

Whatever the answers, hopefully none will put much damper on current progress towards Level 5 autonomous driving. And if they do, perhaps The Boring Company will have a few big projects under its belt and ready to provide better answers.

You can watch Cavnue’s promotional concept video here.

Advertisement
-
Related Topics:

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

Advertisement
Comments

Lifestyle

Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley

Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.

Published

2 days ago

on

October 4, 2026

By

Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.

Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.

Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:

“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”

Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.

The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.

Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.

Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard

Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.

Published

4 days ago

on

October 2, 2026

By

Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with  a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.

The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.

Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents

Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.

Advertisement
-

On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a  Halloween Mode.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Tesla’s newest feature lets you floor it out of a Supercharger while plugged in

Tesla’s new Emergency Drive Away feature lets owners flee a Supercharger while still plugged in.

Published

5 days ago

on

October 1, 2026

By

Tesla has given drivers a way to escape while a vehicle is plugged-in at a Supercharger, in the event of an emergency. The company’s charging team announced a new feature on X called Emergency Drive Away, which lets a driver shift into Drive and pull away while the charging cable is still connected to the car.

Until now, a Tesla would not leave Park with a charge cable plugged in. Drivers had to release the latch from the touchscreen, the Tesla app, or the button on the charge handle, then wait for the port to let go. Emergency Drive Away removes that lockout, but Tesla is clear that it comes at a cost. “Use of this feature will damage your vehicle and the Supercharger,” the company wrote, adding that the function is meant for emergencies only and that deliberate misuse will lead to “additional penalties.” Tesla did not say what those penalties are.


The in-car prompt is just as direct, with the warning reading: “Driving with the cable connected will cause damage to your vehicle and the Supercharger. Short camera recordings will be shared with Tesla.” That footage gives Tesla a way to separate a real emergency from someone who simply did not want to wait for the latch.

The feature requires software update 2026.38.3, and Tesla said in replies to owners that it works at every Supercharger in the United States without new stall hardware. Model S and Model X vehicles built before 2021 are not supported, and the company says the feature applies to U.S. Superchargers “for now,” leaving Canada and other markets out at launch.

Tesla Supercharger argument leads to tragic shooting incident

Advertisement
-

Tesla did not tie the announcement to any specific event, but it arrives two months after a gunman opened fire at an In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, on August 1, targeting three people in two Teslas at the neighboring Supercharger. One of them, a 66 year old man from Salt Lake City, was killed. Superchargers have been the scene of violence before, including a fatal shooting at a station near Denver in 2023.

In the weeks after Twin Falls, owners pushed Tesla for a native way to escape a stall, and many pointed back to EVject, the aftermarket breakaway connector Tesla sued in 2024 over claims it lacked overtemperature protection. The two companies later reached an agreement that led EVject to recall its earlier connectors in favor of a version with thermal sensors.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading