Technology in Vehicles News - Page 1

A Tesla driver decided to get behind the wheel after a few drinks and fell asleep while driving. Luckily his car saved his life.

On July 30, a 24-year-old Tesla owner located in Norway jumped behind the wheel of his Model S after drinking and passed out. Luckily for the driver, and not to mention the other people on the road, Tesla's autopilot system detected that the driver had fallen asleep and kept the vehicle in the middle of the lane before safely coming to a stop.

Videos of the man have surfaced online that clearly show the man asleep at the wheel. According to authorities close to the matter, the man was found "evidently drunk" when Emergency Medical Services arrived and has had his license temporarily suspended. Stories such as these show that systems like Tesla's autopilot can really save lives on the road. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Elon Musk has said that the production of the Tesla Cybertruck won't begin until the production of the Model Y is at volume.

Musk revealed the news during Tesla's second-quarter earnings call and said that the Tesla Semi won't be launched until next year and that there are many supply and engineering challenges ahead of the company. The Tesla CEO goes on to explain that the priority of the new Tesla plant in Texas will be the Model Y and that the Model Y, Semi, and Cybertruck will be fitted with Tesla's next-generation 4680 battery technology.

Due to the Cybertruck and Semi being "heavy users of cell capacity", putting the next-generation batteries into these vehicles won't be economically viable until a steady supply is created with a large volume. Musk continued and said that if Tesla began production on the Cybertruck at low volumes now, the vehicle might cost "$1 million a piece", hence why the company has decided to delay production.

If you live in an area with heavy rainfall and the chance of flooding, it may be time to consider buying a Tesla, at least according to these videos.

It should be noted that none of the Tesla electric vehicles have an official "boat mode", but that doesn't mean that the cars can't drive when surrounded by water. A video released by Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley shows a Tesla owner in China driving through a body of water where the water on the road comes up to the windshield of the car.

This isn't the first time a Tesla owner has challenged the waters in the area, as another Tesla driver tested his luck in a flooded area that had water levels coming up over the back tires. Tesla vehicles are designed to be waterproof (to a degree), which makes sense when you consider that all of the company's vehicles are electric. Perhaps the idea of driving them through water came from a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said, the "Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time".

A Reddit user has shared to moment a tornado enabled the Sentry Mode on an individual's Tesla Model X.

For those that don't know, Tesla vehicles are equipped with Sentry Mode, which is a feature that gives the vehicles more protection as it utilizes all of the car's cameras to record its surroundings. A proximity alert triggers Sentry Mode, and these alerts can vary depending on the situation. Apparently, Sentry Mode is triggered when a Tesla is caught in a tornado, according to Reddit user VanillaGorilla.

VanillaGorilla says that he was out with his wife running errands when the Model X was caught right in the middle of a massive storm that tore through the parking lot. As you can see from the footage, the Sentry Mode is activated on the driver's side door, and while the storm does look exceptionally rough, the Reddit user said the Model X was still driveable after it passed. "The car took a beating but is still driveable, so we can't complain", said the user.

A company has announced an electric vehicle that is capable of mining cryptocurrencies while it was parked.

According to a report from Wired, the Canadian car manufacturer Daymak will be developing an electric vehicle named Spiritus, which will be available in 2023. The new electric vehicle has already received $350 million in preorders for the vehicle, and as you probably already imaged, Daymak accepts cryptocurrency as payment for the vehicle.

The NVIDIA VP of Worldwide AI Initiatives Keith Strier, said, "The idea has tremendous potential because we're looking at not thousands, but tens of millions of supercomputers in these cars. In the United States or Germany, it may not be as big a deal, but in a smaller country, as autonomous trucks and cars hit the road, it completely shifts the potential for compute (sic) in that country."

Jeep teased something big during the extended cut of its new Stellantis EV Day promotional video, with an amphibious SUV capable of driving underwater. Check it out:

Right at the end of the video you can see the unannounced Jeep driving underwater with fish swimming around, with the company of course stating: "Fictionalization. Do not attempt". I don't know how Jeep would be able to sell a car that could drive underwater as shown in the video, because what happens if the car malfunctions and you're stuck underwater?

The future EV (electric vehicle) would be watertight obviously, so we can expect an engineering feat from Jeep to be able to pull it off. I'm sure we'll see Tesla talk about underwater EVs soon, it'll come. I can see future Jeep SUVs driving under water to a certain level, but a fully amphibious vehicle? Hmm.

An opinion piece with the headline "Tesla's Cybertruck Will Be Company's First Flop" has got a reply from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The opinion piece was written by Tim Healey on the website "The Truth About Cars" and goes list reasons why Healey believes that the Cybertruck will be Tesla's first "first true flop as a model". The article was then reposted by Tesla Owners Online, which then Musk replied to explaining that he doesn't care if the Cybertruck is a flop because "I love it".

Musk acknowledges that there is always a large risk taken when you are manufacturing a vehicle that is so unique and that even if it does flop, "I don't care. I love it so much even if others don't." Musk goes on to say that other trucks look similar and that Cybertruck stands out from the pack because it looks like it was designed by "aliens from the future".

For a few months now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been teasing a coming beta for select Tesla owners. This beta ushers in a "feature complete" version of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) package.

Currently, Tesla vehicles aren't considered to be fully autonomous vehicles as they require the driver to be responsible for the car and be prepared to take control at any time. However, that may soon come to an end as Tesla is testing the Full Self-Driving Beta v9 that uses Tesla's own camera-based computer vision system instead of the typical radar sensors.

Musk has been hyping the FSD Beta v9 as "mind-blowing", but unfortunately, Tesla has experienced difficulties with hitting the announced release dates., Musk said that the release would be no later than June, and then he said that it's just "two weeks" away after missing the June release date. Musk then later admitted that the self-driving problem was a lot more difficult to solve than he first anticipated, hence the delays in its release.

Russia has been known for how effective its tanks are, and now a newly released video demonstrates that its tanks can defend themselves from incoming missiles.

The video shows how a tank can protect itself from incoming anit-tank fire by using what has been called the Active Protection System (APS). The video comes from state-controlled Russian media outlet One Russia and demonstrates a Russian infantryman firing an RPG-7 anti-tank grenade at a Russian T-72B3 tank. The tank utilizes its Arena-M APS to defend itself from the incoming missile.

So, how does this work? The APS that this tank in the video is equipped with is named Arena-M hard-kill APS, which like other hard-kill active protection systems, uses radars to monitor any incoming missiles or rockets. If the system detects an incoming missile and confirms that the trajectory of the missile lines up with the tank, the APS system will spring deploy its interceptors to destroy the missile before it can make contact with the tank. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has confirmed that a Boeing 737-200 cargo plane has crashed off the coast of Hawaii.

According to a report from CNBC, the FAA has confirmed that the Transair Flight 810 was forced to make an emergency landing in the ocean near Honolulu at 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday after the pilots reported engine problems. The U.S. Coast Guard has said that both pilots were rescued from the plane and taken to hospital. One survivor was seen on the end of the tail of the aircraft, and the other was found floating on packages in the water. "The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate", said the FAA.

The U.S. Coast Guard said that Transair Flight 810 took off from Honolulu's Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and was on its way to Kahului Airport on Maui. However, shortly after getting airborne engine 1 failed, according to the audio that the air traffic controller received. "Our situation: We lost number 1 engine, and we're coming straight to the airport. There's a chance we're going to lose the other engine. It's running very hot."