If you’re one of the lucky owners of Tesla’s super-awesome electric cars, you’re also might be one of the fortunate few that get to experience the future today.
Tesla just rolled out an over-the-air update that pushed out a semi-autonomous feature to all of its cars made and sold in the U.S. The roll-out could take up to a week.
Will you get to sit back, sipping a martini while your robot car takes you to your dentist appointment? Not yet, says company CEO Elon Musk.
“It works almost to the point where you can take your hands off,” Musk told Wired, “but we won’t say that. Almost.”
In fact, this is really only a baby step towards a fully self-driving car. When in Autopilot mode, drivers will need to keep their hands on the steering wheel in some way; if contact is broken, the car will remind you to put your hands back on the wheel (and maybe your eyes on the road).
The new update also brings new visual changes to the Model S and X, with new instrument panels, larger app windows, and more info about what the car is doing while in Autopilot mode, which – seriously – is why we’re all here, right?
When you’re in Autopilot mode, all you need to do is grab the wheel and steer to go back to manual driving. It’s mostly made for highway and freeway driving (you have to be going above 18 miles per hour to enable it), where there are long stretches of road without a lot of city-like distractions like cyclists, construction, and the like, but this truly is a first in the consumer space. While Google is working on self-driving cars, Tesla is pushing a software update to make their cars magic.
Magic like changing lanes, where you just hit the turn signal and your car speeds up or slows down to match the speed of the lane next to you. Magic like parallel parking with the push of a button. Magic powered by radar, a camera with some image recognition ability and ultrasonic radar.
Seriously, all we need now is a jet and we’re the Jetsons.
Source: Wired
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
4 responses to “Tesla electric car can now (almost) drive itself”
ultrasonic radar? Do you mean Sonar?
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Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor ???
Writer and editor?
Then why is the first paragraph … “you’re also might”
“Tesla just rolled out an over-the-air update that pushed out a semi-autonomous feature to all of its cars made and sold in the U.S.” Not true. Fact check!
Only cars equipped with Autopilot hardware get the semi-autonomous feature.
someone has too much time on their hands…maybe you should become an editor, already have the asshole thing down it appears.