Self Driving Caravan

[jpq21]

I've heard about self driving cars potentially helping traffic, but nothing specific from Tesla about how that would happen.

Once the self driving features are widely adopted for Tesla's (1 to 2 years), it seems like a good idea to have a feature where Tesla's can "caravan" with each other on highways. That is, any group of two or more Tesla's could sync their systems together to go the same speed and travel within 1 car length or less of each other.

The benefits of this would be two fold:
1) Decrease traffic congestion by decreasing distance between cars and effectively turning two or more cars into a unit that travels as one car.
2) Increase battery life and range significantly by decreasing wind resistance.

Thoughts?

 

[mblakele]

This is usually called "platooning". For economic reasons I think we'll see it in semis first, then passenger cars.

 

[Snerruc]

Mercedes has shown a video of several trucks following one with a driver. It might be out in use.

 

[22522]

The bounce pass radar sets the table for this feature.

 

[jpq21]

The bounce pass radar sets the table for this feature.

What's that?

 

[22522]

Sure. One of the problems with platooning (or drafting on road bikes for that matter) is that the trailing vehicles rely on the lead vehicle from a vision perspective. If the lead makes a mistake in observation or response, every body suffers.

The bounce pass radar is work that Tesla announced this year. They have the radar processing coordinated to correctly process reflections that bounce off the pavement underneath the car immediately in front, to see stationary objects in the roadway one vehicle ahead. As I understand it, reflections are going to come back through the gap under the car in front of you, no matter what. Tesla has taken the trouble to make that information coherent enough to be meaningful and actionable.

Forward vision is a big deal if you want to safely draft.

 

[jpq21]

Sure. One of the problems with platooning (or drafting on road bikes for that matter) is that the trailing vehicles rely on the lead vehicle from a vision perspective. If the lead makes a mistake in observation or response, every body suffers.

The bounce pass radar is work that Tesla announced this year. They have the radar processing coordinated to correctly process reflections that bounce off the pavement underneath the car immediately in front, to see stationary objects in the roadway one vehicle ahead. As I understand it, reflections are going to come back through the gap under the car in front of you, no matter what. Tesla has taken the trouble to make that information coherent enough to be meaningful and actionable.

Forward vision is a big deal if you want to safely draft.

Awesome!