Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla plans to roll out controlled access to its full self-driving option sometime before next year.
According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, there’s a good enough chance that the company could grant limited access for some of its customers to a “feature complete” product which will have full self-driving (FSD) capabilities, before the end of 2019. Musk, during a Tesla earnings call yesterday, suggested that it would be a type of beta test, carefully carried out to further the company’s move on autonomous capabilities. He, however, added that the release is “not for sure” and even though it “appears to be on track”, “it’s going to be tight.”
Describing the option, Musk said that the feature ‘complete’ tag simply means that the car would be able to handle autonomous journeys to some extent without any interference from a human driver. Regardless, Musk specified that drivers would still have to be on quick alert and ready to take over driving in case something does go wrong.
For a long time, experts have repeatedly called out Musk and the Tesla team, continuously accusing them of grossly overselling the car’s features. It would seem to them that Musk has a habit of giving timelines for features that aren’t met or don’t really work as advertised.
Last month, Tesla announced the release of a new update, Software Version 10.0, with more than a few additions including access to YouTube, Hulu, Spotify Premium, Netflix and “Caraoke” as well, a feature that allows vehicle occupants to sing on the road to several thousand songs in different languages. Perhaps the most interesting part is the “Smart Summon” feature, an autonomous part of the update that was released exclusively to FSD and Enhanced Autopilot customers. Smart Summon allows an owner to literally summon their Tesla, making it leave a parking spot and drive up to where the owner is, to a 200 feet maximum. Tesla specified that the only way Smart Summon can work is if the car is in the owner’s line of sight. However, several owners have reported that the feature still has problems, concluding that it isn’t yet ready for launch.
It also seems like not enough trouble for the $6,000 price for the Tesla FSD package released earlier this year. The package was originally planned for release back in 2018 but was abandoned by the company because of several complaints that Tesla was overselling the car’s features, especially its autonomy. The FSD initially began at $6,000 if a user decides to buy it along with the car, or $8,000 if the owner wants the upgrade after the vehicle has already been delivered. Musk has said that the FSD package prices will increase continuously as the months roll by.
The CEO has also said that the data used by the company for its autonomous features is directly pulled from the more than 420,000 cars that Tesla already has in the hands of several owners. Musk has said that all of those cars collect information regarding several situations and even road networks and other occurrences as well, which the company employs to continuously improve on newer features.
It’s also worth mentioning that in the context of a row of good news from Tesla, the company revealed a strong third-quarter earnings report, showing an unexpectable profit.
next