Even a Small Scale Self Driving Car Hack Would Cause Chaos, Study Finds

As the battle for the autonomous car market amps up, with Tesla, Waymo and emergent startups all vying to be the first to render human drivers irrelevant, the general public’s worries about crashes and pedestrian fatalities have slowly abated. But new research about self-driving cars has revealed that at least some of the fears about self-driving cars, particularly their potential to exacerbate traffic jams, aren’t unfounded.

The latest academic to sound the warning that autonomous driving might worsen traffic, rather than improve it, is Skanda Vivek, a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In a new paper whose findings Vivek presented Monday, he argues that internet-connected autonomous vehicles are not only hackable, but that hacking even a small percentage of the self-driving cars currently on the road in the U.S.’s largest city could completely stop the flow of traffic and impede the effectiveness of emergency vehicles. Vivek and his team presented their findings at the American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston. read more »

Tesla’s autopilot bait-and-switch does a disservice to early buyers who took them at their word

Along with several other changes in the last few days, one thing Tesla has done is completely reworked how “Enhanced Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” are differentiated.  Features for both of the systems have been shifted around, and FSD, which for a few months wasn’t even available on the cars, is back and available for purchase.

But one of the changes is that Tesla is offering Model 3 owners who already bought the car, but who didn’t previously purchase Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-driving, a discount to purchase the software unlock for either of those systems.

The problem with this is that these systems were originally billed as increasing in price if ordered after delivery, rather than decreasing.  Now, early buyers who took Tesla at their word, and paid full price for these systems, are being left out of the price drops, and will end up having paid more than people who buy it now. read more »