The day after news broke about the fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S in autopilot mode, there s plenty of talk about the future of self-driving technology — including Intel making it official that it s jumping on the bandwagon.
Intel is teaming up with BMW and Mobileye in a bid to create an open platform for self-driving cars and bring fully autonomous driving to the road by 2021, becoming the latest Silicon Valley company to join the growing efforts in the industry.
The Santa Clara-based chip maker is uniquely positioned to bring the end-to-end capability and technology to the future of autonomous driving, CEO Brian Krzanich said in a post in the company s online newsroom Friday.
Intel, like other companies working on the technology, talked up the possible safety improvements that self-driving vehicles could bring. So did the panel at BMW s announcement about the tie-up, which was webcast this morning from Munich.
But the timing is far from ideal, considering that U.S. federal regulators said Thursday they are investigating a crash that killed a man in a 2015 Model S in Florida in May. The Tesla was in Autopilot mode when it hit a tractor trailer as the truck was making a left turn. The crash is believed to be the first fatal one in the U.S. involving self-driving technology.
In addition, Mobileye helps power Tesla s Autopilot technology. The Israeli company says its technology is not yet designed for the type of collision that occurred.
Today s collision avoidance technology, or Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) is defined as rear-end collision avoidance, and is designed specifically for that, Mobileye told TechCrunch. This incident involved a laterally crossing vehicle, which current-generation AEB systems are not designed to actuate upon.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted his condolences Thursday, and the electric-car company called the death of Joshua D. Brown, 40, a tragic loss in a blog post. But the company also defended the safety of its Autopilot system, which allows for automatic steering, lane changes and speed and brake control. As Lou Hansen reported: Tesla said in a statement the May incident is the first known fatality in 130 million miles of Autopilot-enabled driving, a record that compares favorably with human drivers. The company said there s a fatality for every 94 million miles driven by humans.
Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report showing an almost 8 percent rise in U.S. traffic deaths, to 35,200 death in 2015, as Americans drove 3.1 trillion miles — more than ever before.
So how will the first known fatality affect the self-driving car industry?
Brandon Schoettle, project manager for Sustainable Worldwide Transportation at the University of Michigan s Transportation Research Institute, said it s too early to tell.
The more responsible the self-driving vehicle is found to be, the more this might be a setback for the technology, Schoettle said in an email to SiliconBeat. But if the driver is found to have improperly used the system, then the public might be more forgiving toward the technology, especially since it is still very early on in the development of such vehicles.
Relatives of the man who died in the crash said they hope information learned from the investigation helps lead to more innovation, noting that Brown was passionate about technological advancement, according to the Associated Press.
In other news about self-driving tech, Palo Alto-based startup Zoox has reportedly raised a $200 million round of funding. Zoox is one of 14 companies cleared to test self-driving vehicles on California roads.
Photo: A Tesla Model S is shown here in 2012. A Model S in Autopilot mode was involved in a fatal accident in May. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)
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