Image credit – Electrek
Tesla has long warned its drivers and has insisted that its Autopilot feature is not a self-driving feature, and government officials have in the past warned Tesla about the way they market it. However it seems that the company could finally be transitioning into offering full self-driving features in an upcoming update.
This is according to a tweet by Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk (via Electrek) in which he responded to some concerns a customer had with the Autopilot feature. According to Musk, he claims that the problem the customer was describing is expected to be fully fixed in August where it will be part of the Tesla Version 9 update. He also adds that Tesla will enable “full self-driving features” in that update as well.
That issue is better in latest Autopilot software rolling out now & fully fixed in August update as part of our long-awaited Tesla Version 9. To date, Autopilot resources have rightly focused entirely on safety. With V9, we will begin to enable full self-driving features.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2018
It is not clear exactly what Musk means by “full self-driving features” as it seems unlikely that Tesla’s cars can suddenly be transformed into fully autonomous vehicles, where drivers will be free to take their hands off the wheel, check their phones, and what not. Also when you take into consideration some of the recent accidents that we’ve been hearing about involving Autopilot, we’re pretty sure Tesla would want to address that completely before going straight to fully self-driving cars.
It is possible that just like with Autopilot mode, Musk’s “full self-driving features” could simply be a fancy marketing term as opposed to it being literally what it says, Either way we’ll probably have to wait until August to find out.
Filed in . Read more about Self-Driving Cars and Tesla.