Last month, Tesla started the rollout of a new Autopilot 2.0 with a new control algorithm that CEO Elon Musk described as a “smooth as silk”.
While it had some noticeable improvements, like with the Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC), some owners were let down by the update, especially after Musk called it “smooth as silk”.
But a few week later, Tesla is now releasing a new version of the update and this one is better deserving of the hype created by Musk’s comment.
Tesla changed its naming scheme with this new update. It’s still under the version ‘8.1’, but Tesla is now adding ‘2017.28’, which is the year and week, and they added the code ‘c528869’.
The release notes only mention “minor fixes and improvements” so the update is going under the radar, but the update was actually bigger than average and those improvements are quite significant.
We talked to a few owners of Tesla vehicles with second generation Autopilot who already received the update and they all noticed improvements with both Autosteer and TACC. Their vehicles are not “ping ponging” between the lanes anymore, both on highways and also on single lane roads.
They all called the update “smoother”, like Musk’s comment, but the biggest improvement is the Automatic Lane Change, which is now almost flawless, according to some owners. Though, we are also hearing about overall improvements.
We are trying to get some videos to demonstrate the performance of Autopilot on the latest update and we will share when we have any. If you received the update and can take video, let us know and we will share it.
It certainly looks like this latest update is bringing Autopilot 2.0 back to around the same level of efficiency as the first generation of Autopilot. Now as Tesla starts to master its deep learning and computer vision technology, we should soon start seeing even more improvements leading to new features promised under the ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ enabled by the new hardware suite.
Tesla recently started gathering more data from its fleet and hired a new head of AI and Autopilot vision in order to help make it happen.
Update: Here are a few videos of Autopilot under the latest update:
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