Tesla to improve maps and navigation ‘dramatically’ over next several months, says Elon Musk

Tesla recently released some new improvements to its maps and navigation system with version 9, but CEO Elon Musk says that it’s only the beginning, as they are about to ‘”improve dramatically” over the next several months.

With version 9, Tesla introduced two new features to maps and navigation:

• The traffic view has been restyled to further highlight problematic areas. Roads experiencing slower speeds or delays will be emphasized with red and yellow outlines.

• To improve Navigation’s ability to provide relevant instructions, you can now select whether or not your vehicle is eligible for high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. When enabled, Navigation will route you though HOV lanes. When disabled, Navigation avoids routing you through HOV lanes. Tap the settings icon on the bottom corner of the map then enable or disable Use HOV Lanes as desired.

Since last year, Tesla has been working on revamping its maps and navigation system with its own maps, using new open source modules from MapBox and Valhalla.

Earlier this year, they introduced some Waze-like crowdsourced traffic data features alongside a software update.

However, some owners are complaining that the software is still not on par with competitors like Google Maps.

Now, Musk says that some major improvements are coming to all vehicles over the next few months:

True, but this will improve dramatically over next several months & all Tesla cars ever produced (except early Roadsters) will get improvements for free. Continuous, free over-the-air software updates is a big part of why a Tesla retains so much value over time.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2018

The CEO has been teasing a major navigation update “light-years ahead” of current system for almost a year now.

While those previously mentioned updates featured improvements, they represented more incremental changes than the promised revolution.

Electrek’s Take

As I have previously stated, I don’t really get the complaints about Tesla’s navigation system. It’s certainly not perfect, but I’ve rarely had any issues with it and it is certainly much better than any onboard system in other vehicles.

I do understand why some would prefer to use Waze or Google Maps, but did anyone expect Tesla to produce a system to surpass those?

That said, if there are indeed some “dramatic” improvements in the coming months, I feel like Tesla will come quite close to those.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.