New Tesla Hype Vids Exhibit Our Glorious, Autonomous Future
"Get your hands on a Tesla," these videos seem to say, "or be rendered forever irrelevant."
On Monday night, Tesla released two shiny new videos to YouTube, both of which seemed straight out of Hollywood. But this Hollywood isn’t sci-fi: it’s real life, and you may just get to play a starring role.
The first video, “Revolutionize Your Commute,” showcases the autonomous, summonable cars that are right around the (figurative) corner. Autopilot was released as a software update in October, 2015. The program is still rolling out, though — and if you need any nudges in the buy-a-Tesla direction, look no further. (Can you believe how impeccable that man and that man’s apartment are? Must be that I need a Tesla.)
We’ve known that Tesla was getting close to perfecting autonomous cars, and we’ve also known that Tesla owners would be able to summon their cars. (Musk claims that in about two years, we’ll be able to summon cars from just about anywhere.) But this video is just too good — now we get the whole shebang, and we get to pretend that if we get a Tesla we’ll have our lives on track. Perhaps even on autopilot. How truly exciting. From the video’s description:
Autopilot allows Model S to steer within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by using active, traffic-aware cruise control. Digital control of motors, brakes, and steering helps avoid collisions from the front and sides, as well as preventing the car from wandering off the road. Model S can also scan for a parking space, alert you when one is available, and parallel park on command.
Tesla's autopilot Model S is borderline proprioceptive, sensing its surroundings and understanding the makeup of the road.
The second video presents a fairly convincing argument that Tesla is successfully laying siege to Hong Kong and will soon conquer the enormous city. Once the conquering is complete, per the video, everything will be beautiful, the air will be clean, and the citizens will rejoice. Many of the interviewees seem as if to be describing a very, very significant other. (“When I test drove it … I just couldn’t stop thinking about the car afterwards.”) Enough snark, though — here’s the action:
Correction: Tesla’s Autopilot feature became available to Tesla customers as part of the Tesla Version 7.0 software update released in October, 2015. An earlier version of this story implied that the Autopilot update was forthcoming.
