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Tesla autonomous systems still years away in latest setback

Next year should see the deployment of autonomous vehicles on roads in the US, according to a projection by Tesla CEO Elon Musk two years ago.

However, while legislation may not be in place to allow this, Musk’s prediction that the technology would be available in Tesla models rolling off the production line also looks to pass without fruition. At a recent conference, Musk suggested that vehicles could achieve a degree of self-governance within two years, while within three, technology will see vehicles drive better than humans.

However, the company is a long way from its stated aims of mass autonomous vehicle production by 2018, even if legislation was in place to allow it to be used. While Audi is launching Level 3 autonomy on its A8 model, Tesla’s setback comes following issues with its Autopilot system, which has been responsible for a fatality and has not responded several times in testing. This has led to Mobileye cancelling its agreement to supply chips and sensors to the company.

Also, the head of the Autopilot team, Sterling Anderson, left Tesla a few months ago. He is not an isolated case: According to the Wall Street Journal reports, in the past few months, at least ten engineers and four top executives have left Tesla – including Anderson’s successor, who allegedly stayed less than six months.

The wait for launching mass production of Autopilot is the latest setback to befall the company, following a delay in meeting production targets of its Model 3. Tesla produced only 260 of the new vehicles in Q3 2017, which is well below the target Musk suggested of ‘above 1,500’ in September 2017 alone. It blamed production bottlenecks for the shortfall, but said it expected to deal with the problems ‘in the near term’. Production of Model S and Model X vehicles have been scaled down to allow Model 3 production to catch up.

Tesla’s mass production of vehicles is also causing problems for EV battery supply. The carmaker’s Gigafactory is not currently producing sufficient levels of lithium-ion batteries for the vehicles coming out of the facilities due to a lack of stable power supply and extreme staff shortages. This was revealed in early November within the company’s Q3 results. This resulted in the production bottlenecks that caused the production of the Model 3 to lag behind.

Therefore, the company is buying batteries from its production partner Panasonic, which is causing additional problems for customers in other industries with stock shortages. This also means companies such as Samsung and LG are experiencing high demand, therefore causing the supply of lithium-ion batteries to slow.

Automotive Industry Digest

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