Tesla’s bold strategy to include Autopilot in all vehicles is paying off when it comes to complying with the latest standards for automatic emergency braking (AEB).
In the latest NHTSA report, Tesla is the only American automaker with 100% compliance ahead of time.
Back in 2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety announced that they have brokered a historic deal that will see virtually all new cars in the US equipped with automatic emergency braking (AEB) by 2022.
Automatic emergency braking (AEB) is a driver assist system that tries to detect potential collision using camera and radar systems to apply the brakes automatically in order to either prevent a collision or reduce the velocity of the impact.
At that point, Tesla had already adopted a strategy to include cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors in all its vehicles in order to deploy new autonomous driver-assist features through software updates in the future – eventually leading to full self-driving capability.
While Tesla charges for software packages with those driver-assist features, it uses the fact that the hardware is already in the vehicle to include active safety features as standard features.
These safety features include automatic emergency braking and the strategy is paying off.
Today, NHTSA issued an update on the rollout of automatic emergency braking as per their requirements and Tesla is leading US manufacturers by a decent margin:
| Manufacturer | % Reported in 2020 | Manufacturer | % Reported in 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla | 100 | Honda | 94 |
| Volvo | 100 | Nissan | 93 |
| BMW | 99 | Ford | 91 |
| Audi | 99 | Kia | 75 |
| Subaru | 99 | Porsche | 55 |
| Volkswagen | 98 | Maserati | 48 |
| Mercedes-Benz | 97 | General Motors | 47 |
| Toyota | 97 | Mitsubishi | 39 |
| Mazda | 96 | FCA | 14 |
| Hyundai | 96 | Jaguar Land Rover | 0 |
NHTSA Deputy Administrator James Owens commented on the results so far:
“Automatic emergency braking can help prevent or reduce the severity of crashes, which also reduces the risk of injury. We applaud manufacturers for moving swiftly to include lifesaving technologies in new vehicles. Through this voluntary approach, we are seeing significantly faster deployment of automatic emergency braking than we would have through regulation, and that means lives are being saved and injuries are being avoided today.”
Some manufacturers like Fiat-Chrysler have a long way to go in just 2 years with only 14% of their vehicles being equipped with the feature.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
