Tesla recently wrapped up its 2022 annual shareholders meeting, and CEO Elon Musk hinted at a potentially exciting feature coming to the fleet: vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
Towards the tip of the shareholders’ meeting, a gentleman within the audience mentioned how aircrafts use a system called Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS). He elaborated on how ACAS relays an aircraft’s telemetry to stop a collision.
“Sometimes an excessive amount of telemetry,” Musk adds and laughs, assumingly referencing the Twitter account that tracks his private jet.
“Do you see Teslas communicating with each other and Dojo turning into some type of air traffic control for Tesla supply chains and Robotaxi?” adds the gentleman.
Musk answered by saying he hasn’t considered that before, which is interesting. He added that the goal with Dojo is to be the de facto computer for training the neural net with videos.
“Oh. That’s an interesting idea. I haven’t considered that,” Musk responds. “Without delay our goal with Dojo is to be really good at video training. We’ve probably the fourth or approaching the third, strongest computing center on the earth for AI training. Our first goal with Dojo is to make it competitive and be more practical at neural net training than an entire bunch of GPUs. We would get there… soonish.”
Musk also added that Dojo is built “from the bottom up” to coach AI using videos, and constructing such a pc has never been done before.
This query got Musk’s mind going. He paused for a moment and said there could also be some difficulties in getting Teslas to speak with each other – and it won’t be needed with Full Self-Driving.
“There will probably be some merits for Teslas to speak [with] one another, but that won’t be needed for Full Self-Driving in any respect,” Musk responds. “But for a very long time the overwhelming majority of cars will probably be manually driven, so the worth of Tesla-to-Tesla communication isn’t that prime, apart from, perhaps, communicating traffic issues, accidents, potholes, and road closures. A Tesla ahead of you has seen a road closure and also you get that real-time update to your automotive so that you don’t get stuck within the road closure situation. That’s the stuff that we’re working on at once.”
Elon Musk’s Answer
In January of 2022, Twitter user and Tesla enthusiast @BLKMDL3 tweeted at Musk asking about such a feature. “Hey @elonmusk, can we get the air suspension in Model S/X to mechanically raise quickly if the automotive detects a dip within the road ahead after which remember the placement for next time?” BLKMDL3 writes. “Can be an awesome feature to have!”
Musk responded with, “Yeah.”
Hey @elonmusk, can we get the air suspension in Model S/X to mechanically raise quickly if the automotive detects a dip within the road ahead after which remember the placement for next time? Can be an awesome feature to have!
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 20, 2022
BLKMDL3’s tweet received quite a little bit of attention.
Tesla has recently rolled out updates to enhance a vehicle’s ability to boost and lower its suspension when arriving at a selected location. That is so the vehicle doesn’t scuff the pavement and cause damage to its underbody.
Since Musk stated that he hasn’t considered vehicle-to-vehicle communication or how it might be done, we don’t anticipate this feature rolling out anytime soon. Nevertheless, we will hope that it gets added to the pipeline of upcoming features resulting from its seemingly positive reception and need for it. This might also increase the security of Tesla’s vehicles, although they’re already the safest cars on the road.
It will be nice for vehicles inside a 5-10 mile radius to notify each other of a construction zone, or accident, much like Waze. This is able to allow the vehicle to reroute to a more efficient route or handle the situation accordingly. Going a step further, it might be exceptionally cool to see snapshots or videos of the upcoming situation by seeing a “hotspot” in maps, much like how Snapchat shows hotspots, which might be recorded via the vehicle’s cameras to more accurately prepare for it. But this will likely open a can of worms with regard to privacy.
Turning Tesla’s fleet right into a mobile social network may go against Musk’s vision. He’s stated before that any user input within the vehicle needs to be considered an error, so having an interactive feature reminiscent of this will likely not be in Tesla’s deck of cards.
