Future Tesla cars will detect potholes and honk like goats, Elon Musk reveals
Two-factor authentication and self-driving around roundabouts is also coming
Your support helps us to tell the story
As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.
Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power.
Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election
Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
Elon Musk has said that new Tesla cars will have horns that can bleat like a goat.
In a Twitter thread about Dojo, a new neutral network computer that the company is apparently developing, the Tesla CEO was asked whether the “silly talk of making the horn honk like a goat” was “an Easter Egg or wide release software update?”
Musk replied that the feature was “definitely coming” but that it would only “only be on relatively recent cars, as we didn’t have an outside speaker until about a year ago. Can change inside sound easily.”
As well as a goat horn, Musk also mentioned other features that will be coming to Tesla cars in future updates.
Vehicles will be able to “slow down or steer around” potholes via its autonomous system “when safe to do so”.
In the future, Tesla cars will also be able to use this technology to drive around roundabouts, Musk claims.
The vehicles will be able to drive – albeit “not perfectly” – around roundabouts but it will take “maybe a year or so” for Tesla cars “to get really good at roundabouts worldwide.”
“The world has a zillion weird corner cases,” Musk added.
Musk had previously claimed that the first fully self-driving vehicles will be coming at the end of the year. “It’s almost getting to a point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations,” Musk said at the time.
As well as driving features two-factor authentication, which is a more secure form of login via two devices rather than one, is also coming to Tesla cars.
Musk first mentioned that two-factor authentication would be coming in May 2019, and said that the delay was “embarrassingly late”.
“Two factor authentication via sms or authenticator app is going through final validation right now,” Musk tweeted.
Tesla recently became the world’s most valuable auto company – despite selling fewer cars than any of its competitors – last month.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments