Tesla finally decided to take a step to extend the capabilities of its semi-autonomous electric vehicles with the inclusion of a complete set of robust hardware tools. This will make the widely popular electric cars autonomous and the company is today taking a first step towards the release of a complimentary ‘Autopilot’ software update.
Announced on New Year’s eve through a tweet sent out by Tesla CEO and founder Eon Musk, the new update — called HW2 or hardware 2 — will introduce some basic self-driving features to new vehicles. The company had promised to deliver the said update in mid-December but bug fixes and improvements delayed the same. Musk decided to deliver on his word and roll out the Enhanced Autopilot update before the start of this year. But there’s a catch and that’s an important one.
HW2 Autopilot software uploading to 1000 cars this eve. Will then hold to verify no field issues and upload to rest of fleet next week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2016
The HW2 Autopilot update is currently being rolled out to a handful of Tesla owners — whose vehicles have the new sensors. The company is looking to test the reliability and safety of the software update among the 1,000 testers and then move on to a wider roll out (once the quirks in the software reported by this fleet of test cars are fixed). The global release of the update could be seen in the coming week, says Musk in his tweet.
Diving deeper into the details of the software update, Electrek.co has got its hands on the release notes for the update through an owner who is a part of the aforementioned test. The first time features introduced with this update are said to be powered by the new hardware suite and Tesla vision. These features include Autopilot’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control, Forward Collision Warning, and Autosteer at low speeds.
Comparing its intelligent driving system to an Autopilot on an aeroplane, the release notes mention that the primary aim of the said update is as under:
We’ve designed these new Autopilot features to give you more confidence behind the wheel, increase your safety on the road, and make driving in traffic less frustrating. These features operate on a new hardware and software platform. Therefore, their rollout will be measured and cautious until we have generated confidence across several hundred million miles of real-world usage.
Thus, Tesla is now looking to work towards the improvement of these Autopilot features through real-world tests. It’ll firstly release the said update to all new hardware-packed vehicles, and then add some new autonomous features every couple of months. Musk plans to introduce complete ‘self-driving’ capabilities to the Tesla by the end of this year. (fingers crossed!)
