Skip to main content

New Tesla models to have ‘full self-driving capability’

In its online blog, Tesla says that self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future. Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not. The company has announced that from now, all Tesla vehicles produced in its factory, including Model 3, will have th
October 21, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
In its online blog, Tesla says that self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future. Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.

The company has announced that from now, all Tesla vehicles produced in its factory, including Model 3, will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level greater than that of a human driver. Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.

To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software. Together, this system provides a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses.

Model S and Model X vehicles with this new hardware are already in production.

Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, Tesla says it will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience.

During this period, Tesla cars with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on cars with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control. As these features are robustly validated they will be enabled over the air, together with a rapidly expanding set of entirely new features.

Related Content

  • Cooperative infrastructure an aid to environmental aims
    February 3, 2012
    Speculate to accumulate Andras Kovacs looks at how the historical focus of cooperative infrastructure on safety can be oriented to aid emerging environmental aims
  • Creative finance enables parking progress in LA
    March 15, 2016
    David Crawford investigates an innovative public/private partnership. Los Angeles entered the second decade of the 21st century facing major challenges to its parking operations. With a population of 3.8 million, and its car-oriented culture still predominant, the city's parking meters were technically outdated - with most only accepting coins and many regularly out of service - resulting in a substantial loss of revenue. This coincided with a number of Californian cities looking to parking income to boost
  • Half of new vehicles shipping in North America to have driverless capabilities by 2032
    August 28, 2013
    According to a new study by ABI research, the first driverless vehicles will appear in North America in the beginning of the next decade, evolving to more than 10 million robotic vehicles shipping in 2032. “While the technological feasibility of autonomous vehicles is being demonstrated by Google, Audi, Volvo, Bosch, and Continental, obstacles such as high costs and lack of legislation remain. On the other hand, the benefits of autonomous vehicles in terms of safety, cost savings, efficiency, and posit
  • ETSC welcomes EU plans for safer cars, vans and lorries
    December 20, 2016
    The European Commission has published a list of 19 lifesaving safety technologies that could be made mandatory on new vehicles in the next update of EU vehicle safety rules expected next year. The European Transport Safety Council (ETCS) welcomes the announcement but says several critical areas for action are missing, and the proposed timescale is far too long considering that most of the technologies are already available. ETSC says 26,000 people die on European Union roads annually, with at least