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Elon Musk announces ‘moderate to big’ improvements for Autopilot on current hardware

tesla autopilot

The limits of the Autopilot under its current suite of sensors have been debated for a while, especially since Tesla has been discussing an upcoming second-generation hardware for the program to allow fully autonomous driving.

But last night, Elon Musk announced that “certainly moderate and maybe big advances” are possible with Tesla’s current sensors.
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Tesla’s Autopilot will get a significant update with version 8.0, following publicized fatal crash

A member of the media test drives a Tesla Motors Inc. Model S car equipped with Autopilot in Palo Alto, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. Tesla Motors Inc. will begin rolling out the first version of its highly anticipated "autopilot" features to owners of its all-electric Model S sedan Thursday. Autopilot is a step toward the vision of autonomous or self-driving cars, and includes features like automatic lane changing and the ability of the Model S to parallel park for you. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Just as the first fatal crash in a Tesla with the Autopilot activated came to light last week, we revealed that the automaker is planning to release its software version 8.0. Tesla refers to the update as the most important to its touchscreen since the launch of the Model S in 2012, but it will also feature significant improvements to the Autopilot.

While Tesla has obviously been working on the update before the highly publicized crash, which happened in May, the timing is still interesting as Tesla’s semi-autonomous system is now subject to more scrutiny than ever before.
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