2013 Tesla Model S Performance Sedan 4d on 2040-cars

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Could self-driving cars stop terrorist attacks?

Terrorists have taken to using a weapon that's easy to obtain and can do a lot of damage: ordinary vehicles, driven into crowds. A Department of Homeland Security-FBI bulletin from 2012 warned that "vehicle-ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience." CNN recently listed nine vehicle-based terrorist attacks that have occurred within the past year, and in just in the past three months incidents in New York, Edmonton and Barcelona have claimed more than 20 lives and injured dozens after ISIS-affiliated drivers plowed into pedestrians. The deadliest so far was a Bastille Day attack in Nice, France that killed 86 people after a terrorist drove a truck into a crowd following a fireworks display. CNN also reported that "Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch encouraged its recruits in the West to use trucks as weapons," and noted that a 2010 article in the terrorist group's webzine called for deploying a truck as a "mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah." Such attacks have been more common in Europe and other places where guns are harder to get, making vehicles violent and readily available weapons. But it's not only ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists that have turned cars into weapons. A man with white nationalist ties drove a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring dozens more. Some believe that autonomous vehicle technology could help stop these tragedies. "Terrorist attacks like the one in New York are a good example of why we need AVs more quickly," Caleb Watney, technology policy associate at the R Street Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, recently told the website Inverse. Dr. Junfeng Jiao, director of the Urban Information Lab at the University of Texas, told Inverse that "these tragedies may be taken into account by the makers such as Tesla and Google" when developing autonomous technology. "This is a huge opportunity for the next generation to de-weaponize cars," he added. Many vehicles already have forward collision warning with emergency autonomous braking, and a few combine it with pedestrian detection, although the latter technology typically works at speeds below 20 mph.

Tesla Model S track tested at Buttonwillow raceway

Many television viewers will know about the concept of a seven-second delay that allows producers to bleep any loose profanity during live shows before they make it to air. And we're imagining the driver of a Tesla Model S shooting down California's Buttonwillow Raceway may have cursed a bit once the electric vehicle's power limiter kicked in to keep the battery's heat down, because that added about seven seconds to the typical lap time around the 3.1-mile course, Teslarati says. Power-limiter not withstanding, the luxury EV appeared to do pretty well around that circuit, which is located near Bakersfield and about 130 miles north of Los Angeles. One happy dude at Teslarati turned in laps as low as 2:19 and change, beat out a Porsche 911 in acceleration and managed to keep the car on the track. The Tesla topped out at 113 miles per hour, but all that speed consumed electricity at about three times the typical rate. That means that, for the first 10 laps (which were the fastest), the 33 miles of actual distance used up 90 miles worth of range. And with the track's 240-volt outlets working to various degrees and Tesla's nearest Superchargers 50 miles away, there were some potential problems making sure the car could do all the driver wanted. But they're problems we'd love to have. Check out the 11-minute video of the escapade below. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Tesla D is, as expected, an AWD Model S but new autopilot features surprise [w/video]

To say that the Internet was excited about the mysterious Tesla D before tonight's official announcements were made is a terrible understatement. Amid a bunch of excited tweets and frustrating attempts at getting a livestream from the event, USA Today published the first story that described some of the new D's features. Automotive News followed suit, but both of those articles were quickly taken down. On site at the Hawthorne airport in Los Angeles, CA, our friend Zan Dubin-Scott tweeted about an overheard comment before Musk took the stage, "What he's about to say - you need to feel, not just hear about." The 'he' here is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Yeah, people were ready for something big. But the news didn't quite live up to the hype. How could it, really? People wanted to see the first glimpse of the Model 3 or even the production Model X, but all they got were improvements to the current Model S. Thankfully, these are interesting improvements. Here's what Elon's D is all about: The new all-wheel drive Model S – the "D" – will get 10 more miles of range to a max of 275 miles thanks to increased overall efficiencies in the powertrain that Musk called, "a huge improvement." All Model S EVs that have AWD will be designated with a "D," so the P85 "performance" model will become the P85D when it has AWD, for example. The D models will also have a higher top speed and a decreased 0-60 time of just 3.2 seconds. "Literally everything improves about the car with dual-motor," Musk said. The "something else" is the "A," which is the other letter that Musk said he was glad he didn't tease when he said he would "reveal the D." The A is a suite of Tesla autopilot autonomous driving technologies and it's been in production for the last two weeks (no kidding). The new technological bits include a long-range forward-looking radar, a camera with image recognition that can read things like signs and know where pedestrians are, and a 360-degree, long-range sonar. This will all be integrated into the GPS, navigation and real-time traffic, which means that the car is now capable of being semi-autonomous. But Musk said that there are not enough safety redundancies built in to the vehicle quite yet, so it's really just a tremendously advanced active safety system. Unfortunately, the new bits cannot be retrofitted into earlier Model S vehicles.