Photo Credit: Wes Gill, Creative Commons 2.0
On a conference call on Sunday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke with reporters and stated that the Tesla Model S will receive a global update within the next few weeks.
The software update will primarily affect Tesla’s Autopilot feature, which will make the system rely more on the vehicle’s radar instead of attached cameras to detect its surroundings. By relying more on the vehicle’s radar, it is expected that Autopilot will be able to detect its surroundings more accurately and be less hindered by bright light or poor weather.
The upcoming software update is expected to reduce the crash rate of Tesla vehicles by at least 50 percent, according to Musk. “It’s not about going from bad to good. Things are already good. I think it’s about going from good to great.” said Musk. The Autopilot in Tesla’s Model S can already maintain speed, track lanes and brake automatically. However, the safety of Autopilot was in question after a fatal crash resulted from a a driver crashing into a tractor trailer while using the system.
Tesla has made many software improvements since the incident, and Musk claims that the problem of false positives within Autopilots programming has since been fixed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was given data on the new update by Tesla for review.
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