The electric cars a new vision of the future !

Article n°1: Elon Musk on Tesla’s Autopilot 8.0: “Superhuman”

Tesla’s 8.0 update to its Autopilot software will be rolled out within a few weeks. Announced today, the update will offer better radar and better fleet learning. If in action last May, Elon stated, “we believe [the update] would have” saved the life of Josh Brown, driver of an Autopilot-engaged Model S during a fatal accident.

Here’s how the update should impact the Tesla’s abilities.

Expect Better Radar, Learning, Object Detection

“We’re making much more effective use of radar,” Musk explained on a press call about the updates, TechCrunch reports. “We weren’t confident that we could resolve false positives where the radar would think that it should brake, but it shouldn’t.”

From the official announcement on Tesla’s blog:

“The most significant upgrade to Autopilot will be the use of more advanced signal processing to create a picture of the world using the onboard radar. […] After careful consideration, we now believe it can be used as a primary control sensor without requiring the camera to confirm visual image recognition. […] The first part of solving that problem is having a more detailed point cloud. Software 8.0 unlocks access to six times as many radar objects with the same hardware with a lot more information per object.”

Fleet learning will help individual cars understand which instances that seem to be collisions are in actuality an upcoming overpass or hefty highway sign, the announcement added. The object detection abilities will be “superhuman,” Musk said.

It’s Rolling Out Automatically

The Autopilot 8.0 update works with any models from 2014 or later, and so these models will all be affected by the upcoming update. From TechCrunch:

“The entire Autosteer upgrade will be done via over-the-air software, free to existing Tesla owners, and will work with Tesla vehicles from 2014 and on, since those all include the necessary radar hardware.”

The best new feature? The Autopilot 8.0 will automatically shut off if the driver ignores repeated warnings to put their hands on the steering wheel. After all, accidents are likely to be caused by the driver’s failings rather than the car’s.

Article n°2: Rimac Automobili Concept One review - electric hypercar driven

Engine, transmission and 0-60 time

The Concept One uses four electric motors, one driving each wheel, with batteries mounted along the spine of the car and behind the rear bulkhead. Open the rear hatch and you’ll see a power distribution unit where you’d expect to see the engine in a mid-engined car.

Between them the motors generate a colossal 1073bhp and 1180lb ft of torque. The 0-62mph time is just 2.6 seconds, while the top speed is 221mph. Rimac claims a range of 200 miles in more sedate driving.

Being all-electric the Concept One doesn’t use a conventional transmission. However, in order to achieve the lowest possible 0-62mph time, it does feature two very small dual-clutch, two speed gearboxes within the rear axle. The shorter ratio gives maximum acceleration and runs up to around 100mph, but owners will be encouraged to leave their cars in the longer ratio most of the time.

Most modern high performance cars feature some sort of torque vectoring system, but none are as technologically advanced as the Concept One’s Rimac All-Wheel Torque Vectoring. The four electric motors can be precisely controlled to deliver a range of dynamic behaviour – be it stable on road manners or ultra-agile high performance track driving. There’ll also be a drift mode in the near future.

Technical highlights

Featuring dozens of Rimac Automobili patents the Concept One is among the most technologically advanced supercars on sale. The drivetrain is undoubtedly the car’s centerpiece and every component within it has been designed and manufactured by Rimac itself. 

In fact, the only major off-the-shelf components anywhere on the car are the Brembo brakes and KW suspension. Even the headlights and infotainment system are Rimac’s own designs.

The car is built around a spaceframe chassis with double wishbone suspension and pushrods all round. The steering is hydraulically assisted – electric assistance would have been more efficient but it didn’t give the steering feel the engineers wanted – and the tyres are Pirelli P Zeros.

Resume: 

In today society more and more cars manufacturers are developing new projects, like hypercars or electric cars but not many of them go further than just an electric motor. That is why Elon Musk co-founder and CEO of Tesla motors strongly believes in its autonomus cars and don't give up by constantly updating his Tesla autopilot. In my mind it's the greatest project of this century so far because we all know how important cars are in our daily. I think the autopilot is something who only begins his way to a global use because of the simple fact that he might be a solution to reducing the numbers of cars accident. In cities we can imagine that everyone will be in security thanks to this new technology. But here we only talk about big cars manufacturers and some engineer out there wants to reinvent the hypercar and elctric car club. So this is the idea of Rimac, a small croatian manufacturer who believe that electric in the new "Power" who will dynamite all combustion engines on the market! In fact, it's for now the case. But like Elon Musk, Rimac says that driving an electric car have to be an unique experience and that is why the engineer team of rimac consider themselve like geek. In fact the concept one is like a big computer that we can use like a car. All the internal systems can be changed to satisfy the drivers. 

By way of conclusion, I really think electric cars are the future of our daily drive in all the cities around the world and will permit not only less pollution but also more security for all the users, thanks to Elon musk for now. But electric doesn't means only driving slow or be control by a computer it also means incredible performance, driving pleasure and a new rebound in sports cars world. Rimac in one of them but I'm sure Tesla and new companies will joined them during the next 10 years.