Tesla Motors Inc. recently confirmed that the company will implement a major update on the autopilot software used in most of its automobiles within two weeks to further boost vehicle safety.
A report from WSJ shared that Tesla's Chief Executive Elon Musk outlined the revision and hinted that this will heavily depend on the use of more radar signals to assist Tesla vehicles on roadways and provide added safety features to keep the drivers engaged at high speeds.
The same report unveiled that the software updates will be implemented within two weeks and Tesla will deliver these to automobiles over the air. It was found out that the updates will affect all of the Tesla vehicles that were built from October 2014 to the present.
According to automobile experts and observers, Tesla decided to update its vehicle's autopilot software since this came under scrutiny right after Tesla driver Joshua Brown was killed in a crash in Florida last May. Tesla has probably taken this event seriously since it was the first known death that involves the use of the autopilot system.
In addition to that, a Fortune report revealed that a lot of Tesla customers have been complaining that the Autopilot of their vehicles did not function well and even caused accidents. Although Tesla denied most of the claims made, many car experts believe that the company's update plans were probably caused by these issues. It also likely aimed at dealing with the regulators' plan of conducting an investigation on Tesla's autopilot system.
As of the present, it was confirmed through an AutoGuide report that Tesla has upgraded its autopilot software to version 8.0. The said report revealed that a number of major changes to the autopilot and the most significant of these is the increased use of radar.
In a statement posted on the company's website, Tesla was quoted "After careful consideration, we now believe it can be used as a primary control sensor without requiring the camera to confirm visual image recognition."
Due to the said statement, owners of autopilot-equipped Tesla cars can expect that their vehicle will soon be using more radar along with other systems like the "fleet learning," a feature that allows every Tesla car to upload mapping information directly to the carmaker's database so the other cars in the fleet will have access to such.
