Such freedom is granted under the Honda Sensing Elite's Traffic Jam Pilot function, which gives the car control over its own brakes, steering and throttle in that eponymous scenario. This lets the car maintain its following distance, speed and lane position. It does all this with zero input from the driver, who Honda says can "watch television/DVD on the navigation screen or operate the navigation system to search for a destination address." Outside of traffic jams, Honda Sensing Elite functions like the best ADAS technology currently offered from its electric vehicle partner GM, Cadillac's newly updated Super Cruise. With Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Keeping Assist and Low-Speed Follow active on the highway as well as "certain conditions" fulfilled, a Honda Sensing Elite-equipped car can drive behind another vehicle at a preset speed and a safe distance while staying centered in its lane. If the system notices the car ahead is lagging below the set speed, "the system notifies the driver and then assists [with] passing and returning to the original lane."

After months of teasers and announcements, Lucid Motors will finally reveal its first all-electric luxury sedan, the Air, during a live stream on September 9. But of course, the day before the big reveal, a little bit of news has trickled out. Lucid Motors has previously alluded that it will offer a high-end variant of the Air. That flagship variant, called the Dream, is expected to cost $169,000 (or $161,500 after federal tax credits are accounted for), according to a report by Bloomberg. The report said Lucid will produce a Grand Touring variant that will be priced in the low $130,000s after federal tax credits, as well as a sub-$100,000 Touring model.

Hyundai may have its Genesis brand for its luxury aspirations, but the new Le Fil Rouge concept car suggests the automaker's designers aren't quite ready to give up the high-end market yet. Revealed at the Geneva Motor Show 2018 today, the sizable sedan is billed as a vision not only of Hyundai's design language for its next generation of cars, but how it sees artificial intelligence and other technology in automotive developing. The outside is a huge, silver teardrop, all curvaceous lines with a few crisp creases along the way. Hyundai calls it "Sensuous Sportiness" and it's all about bringing together elements of architecture with technology. "The goal is to create an aesthetic bond throughout the future range," Hyundai insists, claiming that its customers choose the automaker's cars because of design first and foremost.

Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter. While the car's production began in early July, the advanced assembly line Tesla has boasted of building still wasn't fully ready as of a few weeks ago, the people said. Tesla's factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3's at a rate of thousands a week, the people said. Automotive experts say it is unusual to be building large parts of a car by hand during production. "That's not how mass production vehicles are made," said Dennis Virag, a manufacturing consultant who has worked in the automotive industry for 40 years.

The 2018 Audi A8, just unveiled in Barcelona, counts as the world's first production car to offer Level 3 autonomy. Level 3 means the driver needn't supervise things at all, so long as the car stays within guidelines. Here that involves driving no faster than 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph), which is why Audi calls the feature AI Traffic Jam Pilot. Go ahead, Audi's saying, read your newspaper or just zone out while traffic creeps along. Take a look at the company's promotional video.

The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show is set to kick off this week in Las Vegas, with promise to bring new innovations in everything from driverless cars to the'Internet of things.' This year marks the show's 50th anniversary, and the event is expected to have the largest array of virtual reality technology yet. While it doesn't officially begin until Thursday, a number of tech giants will be making announcements earlier in the week, including LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony. And, Faraday Future is expected to finally unveil its first production electric car one year after revealing the futuristic concept it claimed could reach 200 miles per hour. The 2017 Consumer Electronics Show is set to kick off this week in Las Vegas, with promise to bring new innovations in everything from driverless cars to the'Internet of things' Self-driving cars and TV screens that can be bent or rolled up are set to be among the biggest attractions when the CES begins on January 5. Some cars will even be equipped with virtual reality displays, according to AFP, while other devices will incorporate the technology in smart glasses, medicine, and beauty makeovers.

In the automotive industry, Tesla is a leader in many respects--but it's hardly head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to self-driving cars. The Silicon Valley automaker is developing fully autonomous cars, but it's part of a crowded field that includes many other automakers and a handful of rich tech companies as well. Still, Tesla's technical approach may give it an advantage over its numerous competitors. DON'T MISS: Let's be clear: Tesla's Autopilot is not a'self-driving car' The company has now collected a huge trove of operating data from customer cars running Tesla's Autopilot driver-assist system. Autopilot does not provide fully autonomous driving at present, but since Tesla began installing the system in its electric cars in late 2015, the system has delivered data on 1.3 billion miles of driving, according to Bloomberg.

I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a modified Audi A7 going about 50 mph on a Washington freeway when the driver -- an Audi engineer -- takes his hands off the wheel. A strip of sky-blue LEDs just beneath the windshield lights up, the dashboard behind the steering wheel indicates the car is in "piloted" mode, and the steering wheel recedes slightly. As we pass an interchange, a sedan and an SUV move to merge into our lane. The Audi, nicknamed "Jack," slows down on its own, giving the other cars enough room to merge safely. All the while the Audi engineer, Kaushik, doesn't lift a finger -- or a toe for that matter -- to touch the wheel or the pedals.

The recent news of the first-known fatality involving Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot system is undeniably tragic. However, it also highlights one distinct difference between the upstart carmaker and the rest of the established automotive industry: Tesla is beta testing the tech on the public. Every other automaker -- from BMW to Cadillac -- flat-out refuses to beta test driverless tech on the public. Other semi-autonomous driving systems, like Volvo's Pilot Assist system and Mercedes' Drive Pilot are in public hands, but they're not beta tests. For those unaware of the concept of beta testing, it's the process of testing something, like software, that's not completely finished yet. The first step, alpha testing, removes the huge, glaring issues.

The fact that a driver was killed in a crash inside his Tesla on Wednesday while the semi-autonomous Autopilot system was engaged is tragic. However, the collision will have ripple effects across Tesla and the rest of the automotive industry. That's because it brings into question people's trust in self-driving systems. While it's fair for people to feel wary of Tesla Autopilot and other semi-autonomous driving systems, it's important people don't conflate it with truly autonomous cars, or use the incident to write off self-driving vehicles altogether. Tesla's blog post explaining the crash that took the life of one of its drivers while its Autopilot system was engaged is impressively detailed.