Ever since Tesla has registered its office in India and has announced its arrival in India loud and clear, potential customers and automobile enthusiasts alike are very keen on gaining some knowledge about all the features and technology that Teslas, all over the world, come equipped with. It is very well known that Tesla takes future mobility and safety very seriously. Hence, all its technology and cars are designed to be future proof to incorporate features that might come in the future. Tesla says that it has incorporated almost all the hardware for which any kind of technology might be developed in the future.
In all this fuss, there are some trademark features from Tesla, that have made it the company and brand that it is today. From autonomous driving capabilities to active safety features to avoid accidents, Tesla has it all. Before Tesla arrives in India in flesh with one of its models, let us quickly get ourselves familiar with the kind of technology and features that Tesla offers.
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Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capabilities
With the assistance of 8 external cameras, a radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a powerful onboard computer, a Tesla car reduces the load off the driver significantly. It is obvious that no matter how attentive the driver might be, he can’t be aware of all the obstacles all-around his car. These cameras, radar and sensors work as eyes for the drivers and can monitor the surroundings of your car at all times. And when it senses something problematic, it can take charge and take the necessary action. There are a ton of things that a Tesla car can do in such situations. We will look at some of the most important ones below.
Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer
As the name suggests, a Tesla car is fully capable of assessing the traffic conditions around you and adapt accordingly in terms of speed, acceleration and braking. It can also steer itself out of danger or according to the lane markings. As one would imagine, these features take a lot of stress off the driver. Also, the driver can take full charge of the car at any time.
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Navigate on Autopilot and Auto Lane Change
These features are particularly important when driving on a highway. This includes active safety features like lane change, which safely tells the driver if it is possible to change lanes. This is obviously assisted by all the cameras and sensors to gauge the situation of the sides and rear of the vehicle. navigate on Autopilot lets the car and driver know when to start taking action to take a particular exit on a highway and automatically turning the turn indicators.
Autopark, Smart Summon and Traffic and Stop Sign Control
Parking in tight spaces has always been a problem for mankind. With Autopark, your Tesla will automatically parallel or perpendicular park your vehicle in tight spaces with a touch of a button. Also, in a parking lot, you can summon your car and it will find its way to you. This is done with the help of the hardware to manoeuvre around all the obstacles in the parking lot automatically. A Tesla car is also able to recognize the traffic signs and signals and slow down the car, as the situation demands.
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Active Safety Features
One of the biggest reasons for Tesla’s success apart from the electrification is the safety aspects. Tesla has incorporated a ton of active features to assist the driver and also enable and facilitate self-driving capabilities. Although this should not come as a surprise to anyone because when you are planning to take place of the driver, then there must be a lot of technology in place to react to every situation possible. In a bid to avoid accidents and collisions, Tesla has a ton of features, which we will look at now.
Automatic Emergency Braking
As the name suggests, this feature applies braking in situations, where the obstacle comes in front of the car suddenly and the driver does not have enough time to react. The sensors of the car are able to see the obstacle before the driver even gets a chance to register something and sends a signal to the on-board computer which applies brake automatically avoiding any sort of damage.
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Front and Side Collision Warning
With so many cameras to cover the sides of the car, Tesla is able to keep an eye out for obstacles on the sides of the car to warn the driver of anything spontaneous that might result in a collision. The beeping sounds warn the driver and appropriate action can be taken either by the car or by the driver. The front radar and ultrasonic sensors have a range of more than 180m even during rain, fog or dust which is far more than a human can ever see. Hence, it can detect obstacles and apply brakes automatically or warn drive.
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Obstacle Aware Acceleration and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance
With this feature, the car is automatically able to reduce acceleration if it detects something in front of your car and also steers away from that obstacle to avoid a collision. Also, when changing lanes, a car is detected in the other lane, the car will automatically steer you back to your lane avoiding any potential encounter with the traffic. Blind Spot Monitoring features help take care of such scenarios to look where the driver can not.
Through a 360-degree view of the surroundings, a multitude of sensors, cameras, radars and a very powerful on-board computer to compute all this information, Tesla surely has made its products future-proof to assist drivers in every possible way. Although, with no proper markings on Indian roads as well as different driving conditions on the road, it will be interesting to see if Tesla brings these features to India at all. Even if it does, there might probably be some tweaks to the software to cope up with our road conditions and driving sensibilities.
