Elon Musk Teases a Major Upgrade to Tesla’s Autopilot

Tesla’s Autopilot autonomous driving software has received a lot of mixed feedback recently, both being blamed for fatal incidents but also praised by a man who believed that the software saved his life. There is no doubt that the software is currently far from perfect and Tesla is hardly a company to stand still as founder Elon Musk has just announced the latest version of Autopilot that is set to be released in the next few weeks.

Major improvements to Autopilot coming with V8.0 and 8.1 software (std OTA update) primarily through advanced processing of radar signals

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2016

The update will be distributed over-the-air to Tesla drivers following a “minor revision” to the 8.0 software currently in development according to Musk.

While Tesla is also reported to be working on a hardware improvement to their vehicles’ self-driving facilities that will provide the software with a number of additional cameras and sensors with which to better control the vehicle, the 8.0 update is software only.

With Tesla under pressure to ensure the safety of the self-driving feature after recent fatalities, it is no surprise that they would want to push out an update to the software as soon as possible to both raise its safety, but also reassure their users that it is safe to use and perhaps convince more to use the optional beta software as it improves.