What Tesla's Grab Of DeepScale Is All About

Tesla has reportedly acquired the four-year-old startup DeepScale, which provides interesting insight into the state of Artificial Intelligence in assisted and automated driving. Operating on $18M in venture funding, DeepScale described themselves as developers of perceptual systems for semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, focusing on low-wattage processors used in mass-market automotive crash avoidance systems to power more accurate perception. This is an important niche in the intelligent vehicle eco-system; the volumes of systems like automatic emergency braking (AEB) are increasing rapidly due to OEMs making them a standard feature. JATO reports that AEB sales as standard equipment have increased from 6% in Model Year 2016 to 39% in Model Year 2018, with the fitment rate rising to 49% of vehicles sold for Model Year 2019. As one who well remembers the refrain "safety doesn't sell" in automotive circles during the 1990's, this is remarkable and gladdening.