Mike and I were the first journalists to ride in the new Tesla Model S sedan yesterday and we were captivated by the massive 17-inch touch screen (so was Gizmodo) featured in the center console of the car. Both Tesla CEO Elon Musk and chief designer Franz von Holzhausen didn’t say much about the on screen system, except that it does have touch capability, it is an “entertainment center” and that it is a prototype which is still undergoing changes and improvements (see what both Musk and von Holzhausen said in our video).
Tesla says that 520 S Model all electric sedans have been reserved by customers in first week since it was announced. At that announcement, Tesla debuted the screen but it wasn’t much to look at (see right). Now it looks much better (Thanks to Nik_Nik for the picture above).
Here’s what we know about the screen. Its a 17-inch LCD touch computer screen that has 3G or wireless connectivity. When we were in the car, the screen featured Google Maps. Tesla’s website verifies that the screen will be able to feature sites like Google Maps and Pandora Music. From what we saw yesterday, the screen is divided vertically into three separate areas: the maps/navigation screen, radio/entertainment area, and climate controls. The navigation screen has several tabs: “internet,” “navigation,” “car,” “backup,” and “phone.” The entertainment section has several tabs, including “audio,” “media,” “streaming,” “playlists,” “artists” and “songs.” The climate controls seem pretty standard. Our driver (see video) says that the computer is going to be run on some kind of Google Maps software and will feature a “full browser.” It’s not surprising that Google Maps is integrated into the interface, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are investors in Tesla. The dashboard is also an LCD touch screen. Tesla has also confirmed to us that the computer/entertainment center will be Linux-based.
Here’s the video of both Musk and von Holzhausen talking about Tesla’s computer and footage of our driver revealing more about the technology:
Did you call yourself a journalist?
Besides that I’m happy for Tesla. And for Elon Musk.
Wow! That’s a big screen on this type of car or any car.
I won’t be surprised if they put TV on…but then where would be the safety of the drivers?
Very nice…what about a TC integration?
Will there be steering wheel controls as well?
Will Pandora still be around when this puppy drops? I sure hope so, but what happened to them being the sacrificial lamb?
My worry here is the lack of tactile feedback. On most cars, I can reach to the center console without looking and change whatever knob/button I need to. Hopefully there will be some awesome voice activated system instead.
You’re right, Jason. Otherwise, you constantly have to look at the screen and that means you are not paying attention at the road.
And that could spell trouble…
I haven’t watched the video, but “haptic” says to me that there are / will be physical “clicks” to register button presses.
If that’s the case then I’m assuaged. It’s definitely not a knob, but add in a little muscle memory and it’ll do alright.
I can see it now.
Jason: “Tesla, I’ve just spilled a drink on myself. Clean it up.”
I don’t care how great the haptic feedback system is, you still need at least one analog device: the volume knob. When you’re driving around, you just want to be able to reach out and adjust the volume.
So does your wife in the passenger seat. My wife would be pissed if she couldn’t easily turn my music down.
Does anyone know who developed this system? I know the Tesla Roadster has a JVC system (aftermarket) but that is obviously far from this technology.
Check the stills of the Steering wheel in the second picture above.
There are an awful lot of buttons there, which seems in keeping with current trends of putting many of the driver controls (cruise control, audio volume, station selection, etc) literally “at the driver’s fingertips”.
And video-capable systems such as this are commonly wired to prevent the playing of video while the vehicle is in motion, in keeping with legal requirements in many jurisdictions.
I agree with Jason about the tactile feedback. It seems like this is a system you’d need to learn before you ever drive the car. I know dash-mounted DVD systems are banned in many states, but how do they plan on making sure this system isn’t a distraction to drivers? Other than that, it’s great!
Beautiful car overall, but the all digital dash/console is by far the worst part. Even the rightfully maligned idrive system in the BMWs had something physical to grab.
Leena, is the car-navigation system voice or speech enabled ?
I think that this will be the next state of the art feature to be developed into the car?
There was a research done here in New Zealand for a local company (Navman which has now been acquired by Brunswick Corporation from US) about enhancing their GPS in-car navigation system by developing it to be voice/speech enabled. Voice/Speech enabled in-car navigation is quite difficult due to the noise interference from the car’s engine, which tend to make the system very difficult to operate correctly. Voice/Speech recognition works best when there is no noise interference. When noise (audio) exists, then there is high error rate in the recognition task. The research done for Navman was conducted by researchers in one of the local University (AUT), which they developed sophisticated real-time adaptive noise-cancellation using signal blind source separation (BSS) algorithms. The noise-cancellation will eliminate the noise originated from the car engine when it runs (ie, when you’re on the road) so that the speech processing system can receive the drivers speech command clear of the audio noise (or at least minimized). In this way the speech recognition rate is high.
I understand that there was a delay in the commercial implementation of this noise-cancellation technology for Navman’s voice/speech enabled technology because of the changeover of the management and the way how its R&D was restructured after Brunswick acquired Navman.
The race now for developers of in-car voice/enabled system (either for navigation purposes or other uses) is to bring it to commercial use. The first one to get there will be ahead.
Here is one of the research paper from Navman/AUT researchers on describing such enhanced voice/speech enabled in-car system.
Title (freely downloadable PDF):
————————
In-Vehicle Noise and Enhanced Speech Intelligibility
Abstract:
——-
In-Car speech recognition will be pervasive over the coming years. The goal of speech enhancement is to increase the quality and intelligibility of speech in a noisy environment. The focus of the present research is to evaluate
the effect of speech enhancement on the intelligibility of spoken language in a moving vehicle. Here, an ECoS network is used as a model to evaluate the intelligibility. A baseline performance was established using clean speech data. This data was then mixed with various types of in-vehicle noise at several signal-to-noise ratios. Speech enhancement techniques were applied to the noisy speech data. The performance of the ECoS model was evaluated when the noisy and enhanced speech was presented. Several factors were found to affect
the recognition rate, including noise type and noise volume.
from the video, it seems like the screen will be hard to see when it’s sunny out. won’t that be a problem in sunny california?
I just hope that enough people with too much money buy this so that someday us people without much money can afford it. Tesla is doing such great things for innovation in the automotive industry.
awesome screen and car too.
I think the least you can do is put “Sponsored Post” on this since it’s the second shameless plug for Tesla in the last 48 hrs.
This looks like a *huge* improvement over the crappy GPS/stereo in the Roadster, which quite frankly sucks.
that looks cool, and you are not a journalist, you are a glorified blogger…
Now you will buy a car for it’s 17 inch screen in order to view movies and other entertainment on your drive or garage instead of driving around.
Wow, 3G and Wireless… Boss I’ll be working from Car today
“Mike and I were the first journalists ” breaking news, you’re not journalists!
journalist |ˈjərnl-ist|
noun
a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news to be broadcast on radio or television.
Source: New Oxford America Dictionary
Yay, Ubuntu Telsa Edition!
So how is this UI power efficient… looks like it would be burning too much power on a sunny day to show those buttons…
Takes 0W in other cars
Nice