forefront – Tech Today w/ Ken May

France’s ecology minister has laid out an ambitious plan that would see the nation effectively ban the sale of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles by 2040. Nicolas Hulot, as quoted by the Financial Times , claims that France is announcing the “end of the sale of gasoline and diesel cars” by the deadline. As Le Figaro adds, it’s not clear how the country will enforce the transition, but Hulot says that the “conditions are there.” France doesn’t have a bottomless sovereign wealth fund like Norway , for example, that it can use to finance a transition to cleaner energy. But, what France does have in its favor is a sizable stake in both PSA, the owner of Peugeot and Citroen, and Renault. As a consequence, it can exert plenty of pressure on some of the world’s largest auto manufacturers to help accelerate the process. In addition, Hulot is planning some sort of financial incentive as a lever to push buyers toward hybrid or electric vehicles. That could take the form of an extra pollution tax on older vehicles, or a tax break (or other subsidy) to encourage the purchase of newer, cleaner cars. Although the details are still hazy, France will also establish itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change by instituting a carbon tax , which would be upward of 100 euros per tonne of carbon. In addition, the country will stop issuing new licenses for oil exploration and make a bigger push for renewable energy. Right now, all of this is just a plan, but given that France’s current government was given a huge mandate by voters, it’s hard to see where any opposition would come from. It’s not the first piece of good news this week for folks who don’t want the Earth to boil away in the next few years. Volvo has pledged to stop producing vehicles with entirely gasoline or diesel-powered motors by 2019. Instead, each new car, from that point, will be hybrid or entirely electric and, in addition, Volkswagen believes that it can sell three million EVs by 2025. Source: Le Figaro , Financial Times

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France plans to ban fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2040

When Tesla announced that every car they produce is now coming out of the factory with full self-driving hardware, I was a little stunned. I figured the relatively easy highway stuff was one thing, but that navigating towns, cities and crosswalks would be another. Nevertheless, while it’s true that they’ll have to wait for legislators to get their acts together before rolling it out, Tesla has achieved fully self-driving cars that can navigate within complex environments. In this real-world demonstration video, a guy takes a ride to work (to a Tesla facility, naturally) while his car does all of the driving. It navigates a town environment, tons of traffic and twisty roads while avoiding pedestrians: While we’re only shown three camera views, Tesla’s system uses eight cameras that provide a 360-degree view. The camera footage is combined with sonar and radar to provide a “neural net” that “provides a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses.” One temporary setback is that Tesla’s updated system doesn’t yet have the “experience” generated by their last-generation system. This means that, temporarily, new Tesla owners will actually have less capabilities than first-gen owners. As the company explains: Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience. While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control. As these features are robustly validated we will enable them over the air, together with a rapidly expanding set of entirely new features. As always, our over-the-air software updates will keep customers at the forefront of technology and continue to make every Tesla, including those equipped with first-generation Autopilot and earlier cars, more capable over time.

More here:
POV of Tesla Driving While Equipped with Autopilot Full Self-Driving Hardware