Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that buyers of Model X and Model S cars will start getting the new Autopilot system in their vehicles around mid-December.
Tesla's New Autopilot
In a tweet posted on Sunday, Nov. 27, first noticed by Electrek, Musk said that we can expect the new features to arrive in "about three weeks." He also added that the new features will come out incrementally, in "monthly releases."
According to Mashable, the car maker announced in October that in the future all of its cars will come with heavily upgraded self-driving capabilities. The upgraded version of Autopilot will practically allow for full autonomous driving.
Upcoming Autopilot Upgrades
The current Autopilot system will have a huge increase in processing power and will be upgraded to 12 supersonic sensors and 8 cameras. The upgrades will enable a feature set called by Tesla Motors "Enhanced Autopilot." According to Tesla, the upcoming upgraded Autopilot will allow for capabilities such as keeping within a lane, automatic lane changing, automatic exiting the freeway when the destination is close, matching speed to traffic conditions, self-parking when near a parking spot and more.
According to Business Insider, in order to achieve such self-driving capabilities, the new radar sensor will have enhanced processing that allows it to see through dust, fog, heavy rain and even a car in front of it. The upcoming Tesla Autopilot systems will also use a new onboard computer system, Nvidia's Titan GPU, which provides 40 times as much computing power as Tesla's previous system.
Owners who purchased Tesla cars with the self-driving system have noticed that several Autopilot features are currently disabled, including park assist, auto emergency braking and blind spot detection. These features were disabled by Tesla while it calibrates the new sensors on the cars. The features will return in the Enhanced Autopilot, starting in mid-December.
The new Autopilot system will come as an option for the customers who buy a new Tesla car. It will have a price tag of $5,000.
