Following its claims from last week, Tesla is today rolling out the much-awaited Autopilot update to all cars packing the 2nd-gen hardware and sensor suite. Though the update has been made available for downloading, there’s still a catch. You cannot it as of yet.
Tesla had previously announced that the said update will start rolling out to 1,000 test cars, with a scheduled release for all vehicles within a week. And now the automaker is fulfilling its promise by releasing the update to all 2nd-gen vehicles but in non-actuating mode. This move, the founder of Tesla Elon Musk, explains has been made to assess the reliability of the software update. If the update seems reliable, then it will be activated for all by the end of this week.
HW2 Autopilot now downloading to all HW2 cars, but in non-actuating mode to assess reliability. If looks good, actuation by end of week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2017
The company is extremely cautious with the release of autonomous features for its vehicles, so as to avoid any sudden on-road mishaps. The Autopilot is, thus, being rolled out in steps with a prolonged testing period for each update. This time around, Tesla has resorted to collecting feedback from a set of 1,000 users before moving on towards a widespread rollout.
And now, it is taking further precautions, by making the update available for download and not for use. Musk had previously also said that the update will roll out to all vehicles in a locked shadow mode. Some users have already received an update for their Autopilot capabilities and are now questioning the lack of release notes as a plausible reason for the actuation period.
@craighamnett Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2017
Though there might be a lack of release notes but this Autopilot update adds adaptive speed and auto-steer capabilities to the vehicles. Tesla had also advertised the introduction of a Ludicrous+ mode with this update, which enabled you to go from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.34 seconds. It had been done to beat its arch-rival Faraday Future, who beat the automaker’s speed record with its first production car FF91. But, Tesla has retracted its claims for the speed limit.
Further, it has refrained from releasing most of the HW1 features to HW2 vehicles as it wanted to mold the autonomous features first. The automaker is now releasing these features to the vehicles to make them at par with the existing fleet — which sadly, aren’t autonomous. But, the automaker is finally readying itself to take over the autonomous mobility ecosystem with its step-by-step Autopilot updates.
