特斯拉 全自動駕駛汽車明年底之前上路

Tesla Motors plans to make its cars capable of fully autonomous driving by the end of next year, setting an aggressive deadline that could put it ahead of other carmakers in the race to put robot cars on the road.

特斯拉汽車(Tesla Motors)計劃使其汽車最遲在明年底能夠完全自主駕駛，從而設定一個咄咄逼人的截止日期，有望使該公司比其他汽車製造商更早推出能夠上路的機器人汽車。

Elon Musk, chief executive, said on Wednesday that his company’s electric cars would be able to drive coast-to-coast in the US — “all the way from home in Los Angeles and dropping you in Times Square by the end of next year and then parking itself, without the need for a single touch”.

首席執行官埃隆.馬斯克(Elon Musk)週三表示，他的公司的電動車將能夠從美國的西海岸行駛到東海岸——“最遲在明年底，從洛杉磯的家，一路把你送到（紐約市）時代廣場，然後自己泊車，不需要你碰任何東西”。

The news that the US electric car company is pushing ahead to full self-driving cars comes despite the death of a Tesla owner in a crash in the US earlier this year while his car was under its own control, using what the company calls “Autopilot” mode. Tesla also faces a lawsuit in China over a second death allegedly linked to its current driver-assistance, though it has denied its technology was at fault.

這家美國電動汽車公司宣佈推進全自動駕駛汽車計劃之際，今年早些時候美國一名特斯拉車主死於撞車事故，當時他的汽車在自動控制狀態，使用該公司所稱的“自動輔助駕駛”(Autopilot)。特斯拉還在中國面臨第二起死亡事故訴訟，據稱事故與該公司的駕駛員輔助技術有關，但該公司否認其技術在那起事故中有任何過錯。

The US fatality had already led Tesla to revamp its self-driving technology, giving more prominence to signals from its vehicles’ on-board radar systems rather than relying so heavily on the front-facing camera. The accident followed the failure of the car’s camera to identify the side of a white truck against a bright sky.

美國發生的死亡已促使特斯拉改良其自動駕駛技術，讓車載雷達系統的信號發揮更大作用，而不是如此嚴重依賴前置攝像頭。那起事故的起因是車上的攝像頭未能在明亮天空的背景下識別一輛白色卡車的側面。

On Wednesday, he criticised journalists for what he claimed was excessive media coverage of the US fatality. “If you effectively dissuade people from buying autonomous vehicles, you’re killing people,” he warned. “Paucity of media coverage of the 1.2m people who die each year in crashes does not reflect well on the media, it really doesn’t.”

週三，馬斯克批評記者，稱媒體對上述美國死亡事故的報道多得過分。“如果你實際上勸阻人們購買自主駕駛車輛，你就是在害人，”他警告說，“媒體對每年死於道路交通事故的120萬人報道很少，這對媒體的形象不利，真的很不利。”