Federal vehicle safety regulators in Michigan have launched an investigation into a new accident involving a Tesla Model Y electric vehicle that crashed into a stationary police car while driving in autopilot mode.
During the crash this Wednesday, a Tesla Model Y crashed into a blue Dodge Charger sedan. At that moment, the policeman stopped to record the accident of another vehicle, the driver of which hit a deer. The police car was parked with the emergency lights on, with part of it in the far right lane.
Officials said neither the officer nor the 22-year-old Tesla driver suffered any injuries. According to the officer, the driver reported that the car was moving in autopilot mode. The accident occurred in Eaton County, located about 100 miles northwest of Detroit.
The incident was just another in a series of accidents involving Tesla electric vehicles that drew criticism from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). At the same time, this is the second collision involving a Tesla car in Michigan in the last week. Prior to this, a Tesla electric car drove under a truck, while the passengers were badly injured.
Tesla has not yet commented on the situation.
Gizchina News of the week
Tesla and Samsung working together to develop a 5nm chip for autonomous driving
According to previous reports, the Tesla development team is working hard to develop a more sophisticated artificial intelligence framework. It will provide its vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. South Korean Media Asia E reported that Samsung is currently developing a 5nm chip that provides computing power for Tesla’s self-driving cars. 5nm is the most cutting-edge standard we have in the market right now. It will dictate the path for the companies in the next years as 3nm may only become a reality by 2023. That said, just a few companies already have domain over the 5nm standard, and Samsung certainly is one of them.
Samsung currently provides 14nm chips for Tesla. Now, the companies are expanding their cooperation. The in-vehicle infotainment system uses a variety of chips such as processors, neural network processors (NPU), security integrated circuits, memory and display drive ICs (DDI). It is a core technology that processes information from sensors, lighting, and communications in the car and transmits it to the screen to enable the vehicle to achieve fully autonomous driving. As Tesla is planning to modernize its setup, Samsung is focusing its development in this direction.
Samsung believes that it has the ability to skip the research and development of 7nm chips. So it will immediately start research and development of 5nm chips for cars. If the company manages to successfully make this, the brand may find a supply agreement with Tesla.
This goes against certain rumors pointing to Tesla’s acquisition by Apple. Anyway, we have to wait for more details in this regard.
