By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario — May 10, 2019 — In this week’s Autonomous/Electric Vehicle Report, the Yukon is getting electric vehicle charging stations, Tesla’s autopilot feature came to the rescue, plus a recent discovery about autonomous advertising.
Yukon’s Electric Overcharge
The Yukon Territory will soon be home to three new electric vehicle charging stations. This week, Member of Parliament for Yukon Larry Bagnell announced that Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources would be investing a little more than $212,000 to install the new charging stations, which are meant to encourage the uptake of EVs in the Yukon. With two currently operating EV charging stations in operation at the moment, the three additional stations will make Yukon’s EV drivers among the best service in the world. Just twelve all-electric vehicles are registered in the territory.
Hooray for HAL’s Heroics
Dashcam footage has emerged showing a Tesla’s autopilot making a potentially life-saving maneuver. After a car plowed into the back of a Tesla Model 3 in a turning lane, the electric vehicle’s self-driving functions kicked in, deftly turning the vehicle into a passing lane. In recent weeks, other examples of Tesla’s making some breath-taking decisions in order to prevent collisions have gained popularity on the internet. Following a series of accidents featuring experimental autonomous vehicles in late 2017, public distrust of autonomous technology has remained relatively high. Whether these videos will help Tesla and other autonomous vehicles regain the trust of American drivers remains to be seen.
Autonomous Advertising
While Tesla may trust its driver’s lives to a decision-making algorithm, it does not trust its marketing to them, a report has found. Issued by the U.S.-based firm Brand Total, the report analyzed all paid and organic social campaigns from major automotive brands, including Toyota, BMW, Ford, Audi, Honda, Nissan, Infiniti, Tesla, Lexus, Cadillac and Porsche in the U.S. over the course 30 days. Unlike any of the other profiled brands, Tesla invested no money in social media advertisements. Unlike traditional advertisements, social media companies use self-learning algorithms to predict which viewers are most susceptible to a particular ad.
