New fodder for the HUD speculation from Elon Musk's tweet, answering a question about Tesla Roadster: "Definitely. Will also have Augmented Mode that will massively enhance human driving ability. Like a flying metal suit, but in car form …"
Elon Musk on Twitter
As you know, I have been speculating about an Augmented Reality HUD for some time now (see
first post). My concept drawing could certainly fit the bill of an "Augmented Mode":
That said, the Augmented Mode described by Elon could also fit some form of advanced traction control - or a combination of both vision and other augmented features.
This image of a flying metal suit from popular culture is popular - and Elon did, way back when, talk of "spaceship controls" too - could this have been what Elon had in mind in both instances?
There is also the fact that Augmented Reality HUDs are an industry-wide phenomenon in development (again, links earlier in this thread to threads with links to several development projects). Tesla hopping on this train would seem plausible from that perspective as well, though not a guarantee given how Tesla regularly shirks common trends.
As for the rest, there has been very little progress and reason to update the thread, as the real action has been over on the Model 3 side, which seems to be progressing towards an eventual success IMO. Obviously Model S/X progress has stalled and many speculated timelines have been excessively optimistic. A few comments:
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The red interior. I personally agree with the alleged leaks, as well as the speculation from Elon about the red interior, that any major update to Model S/X were postponed - possibly from a planned Q1/2018 update to late 2018 or early 2019, due to a need to focus on Model 3 and that the reference to a red interior next year could point to the new timeline. These rumors and alleged leaks are quoted earlier in this thread. The mild trim update recently done to Model S/X interior seems like a stop-gap to me. IMO the red interior could be a sign of a revised interior, one that could include things like Model 3's interior camera, new dash and screens and possibly an Augmented Reality HUD, and not just another stop-gap. As usual, all speculation and subject to change at whims of Tesla even in the best of guessing times.
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Two paths to on-ramp/off-ramp on Autopilot. An interesting conversation. It is obviously true that Tesla's in-house EAP codebase is much more feature-rich than the shipping one, as has been mentioned by Elon Musk (and is believable, as well as supported by leaked photos). Navigation-based off-ramp was originally promised for around Q4/2016 for AP1. It does not seem implausible that Tesla could have gotten things to work soon(ish) in this regard after a delay of 1.5+ years. AP1 features seem delayed quite possibly to keep it from increasing a parity gap and I guess I'd expect both to appear at the same time, if they got the AP1 improvements to work reliably too. (If not, quietly forgetting about the AP1 promise, like the
vanity mirror retrofit - now shipping but not retrofitting - seems plausible too.)
Still, there are legitimate concerns about the pace and reliability of Tesla's NN progress, given the reported lust to wander away from lanes and center towards gore points - and the general length it has taken for significant new features to arrive (I believe
@calisnow would have lost his $10,000 bet had someone taken him up on it, no new EAP features?) - so the timeline of maturing of these new features seems unknown. Past progress may or may not be indicative of anything. I do wonder if the
recent manual changes regarding lead cars could be sign of Tesla steering away from lead car bias, possibly a result of the
latest Mountain View incident information mentioning a lead car? A
shout-out to @croman - I still don't see blue almost ever, a bright white IC car in front is common, though.
- I have long been a proponent of the speculation that the new 2170 battery (currently in Model 3) is superior to the old-cell battery in more ways than just cost. I think we may be seeing the first signs of this unfolding in the impressive range, performance and other potentially not yet unveiled improvements happening in the battery space:
Tesla releases rare details about Model 3’s battery cells, claims highest energy density and less cobalt. Speculatedly the difficulties with the Gigafactory and Model 3 ramp-up have precluded any talk of introducing these on the Model S/X yet, but when the full capabilities of the new batteries will be shown I continue to expect significant improvements and kWh upgrades over the old cell even in the current (or slightly facelifted) Model S/X form-factor.
Thanks to all who have continued to interesting analysis and speculation on these! Please keep up the good work.
