As automakers race to perfect self-driving cars, one innovative company seems to be pulling ahead. Tesla, which has already accumulated one billion miles in its Autopilot feature, is expected to reach 2.3 billion by the end of next year.
This exponential growth is due largely to Tesla’s stellar sales numbers in recent months. The Tesla Autopilot system relies on artificial intelligence to improve, so these added numbers mean that there are just that many more people driving around using the Autopilot feature.
Simply put, the more miles Tesla has, the better its system will be compared to others’. As it stands, Tesla’s Autopilot is widely regarded as the best at the moment. By more than doubling the miles, Tesla will doubtlessly only increase the distance between it and the next in line, when it comes to self-driving technology.
Lex Fridman, a research scientist at MIT working on human-centered artificial intelligence, projects that the miles racked up by Tesla will accumulate faster and faster as Telsa Model 3 sales soar. He tweeted the following infographic:
“New @Tesla Autopilot mileage projections,” he wrote. “Today it’s over 1 billion miles. By end of next year, it’ll be over 2.3 billion. All of us working in autonomous vehicle research want nothing more than to save lives. Happy holidays & good luck.”
The Autopilot features include keeping the car in the middle of the lane, adaptive cruise control, parking itself, changing lanes with confirmation, as well as summoning the car from the garage or parking spot. As more and more countries begin to introduce the Tesla into their markets, it’s very likely we will see these numbers only rise.
Despite the technological, legal, and ethical hurdles that must be cleared before full self-driving automobiles are on the road, this is Tesla’s stated intent for its Autopilot system.
So if you’re thinking of getting an electric car, the Tesla is a good option, as its Autopilot update will likely be the first and best to have full self-driving capabilities.