Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk just tweeted to inform the public that the company has been working on a major Tesla Autopilot update and that it’s going to be released soon. The Autopilot features have had quite a lot of bad press recently due to some incidents, and though the company has maintained that Autopilot has not been at fault, it has been continuously working to make the system safer.
In case you’re unaware, Autopilot is the name that Tesla gives to a set of semi-autonomous features found in its cars like the Model X and the Model S. These features have prompted people to do some crazy things even though drivers are told to always keep their hands on the wheel at all times when Autopilot is engaged.
Musk says that the improvements have primarily been made possible through advanced processing of radar signals. This means that Tesla is only making a software update to Autopilot right now though there are reports that a hardware upgrade might be in the pipeline as well.
The over-the-air software upgrade which will bring these Autopilot improvements will be released in a few weeks. Musk says that the company will first release a minor revision on version 8.0 before releasing the version 8.1 update.
Tesla will provide more details about this update in a blog post later today.
Major improvements to Autopilot coming with V8.0 and 8.1 software (std OTA update) primarily through advanced processing of radar signals
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2016