Tesla releases new update for vehicles with its new ‘Tesla Vision’ system to restore Autopilot features

Tesla has started pushing a new software update for Model 3 and Model Y vehicles equipped with its new “Tesla Vision” computer vision system in order to restore some Autopilot functionality.

Last month, Tesla announced the transition to its “Tesla Vision” Autopilot without radar, and it warned that it would result in limitations of some Autopilot features at first.

New Model 3 and Model Y vehicles delivered didn’t have emergency lane departure avoidance or smart summon, and the Autopilot system (Autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control) was limited to 75 mph.

The idea is that Tesla needed some time to make sure those features would be safe with only its computer vision system without the radar sensor.

At the time, CEO Elon Musk told Electrek that he believes Autopilot features with Tesla Vision will soon surpass what is possible with the radar sensor:

“It will have all the safety features of prior vision+radar and then some. The software should be fully rolled out to all new vehicles within two weeks. The probability of safety will be higher with pure vision than vision+radar, not lower. Vision has become so good that radar actually reduces signal/noise.”

It didn’t take two weeks, but the improvements are now coming.

Yesterday, Musk confirmed that an update is coming to remove some of those restrictions:

“Production release update coming this week, which includes raising max speed to 80 mph. Sorry, 75 mph limit was done as precautionary measure. Turned out to be unnecessary.”

Now, those changes are starting to be pushed to new vehicles.

Tesla has started releasing a new software update (2021.4.18.10) that is bringing back emergency lane departure avoidance and smart summon, and it is increasing the Autopilot speed limit from 75 mph to 80 mph.

Now that the new system is catching up, Tesla is expected to release it to even vehicles with radar sensors since the vision-only system is expected to improve faster.

It is now expected to come with Tesla’s FSD beta v9, which is expected to come within the next week.