All of Tesla's cars will have self-driving hardware onboard. Will it ever be switched on? (Image courtesy of Tesla.)
The announcement signals the company’s commitment to taking humans out of their traditional role as commanders of their cars for safety’s sake. “[A]s of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver,” stated the company.
To achieve this level of autonomy, all Tesla’s will employ a suite of eight surround cameras (providing 360 degree view around the car with a range of 250m), twelve enhanced ultrasonic sensors to detect hard and soft object on the road and a forward facing radar that will add additional data to the system no matter the weather conditions, be they rain, snow or blinding fog.
While Tesla’s new driverless sensor suite represents an impressive array of hardware, what ties it all together is the company’s neural net processing system. According to Tesla, new models will carry with them a computer system that’s roughly 40 times more powerful than the version running on older models. With this new system, Tesla’s can relieve owners of the need to drive by providing “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.”
But the question remains: When will all these Teslas put their capacity for self-driving into action?
Tesla’s engineers haven’t given a specific time frame for a full autopilot feature rollout, but they have said that in the short term they will continue to calibrate their newly upgraded hardware. As the hardware becomes further validated through field tests Tesla will begin updating their cars with its “over-the-air” update system.
For more Tesla news, find out why the company is touting the new Model S as the quickest production car in the world.