Elon Musk announces “breathtaking” autopilot beta for Saturday
The level 2 assistant costs 7,500 euros extra. A subscription model should give way. (Photo: Tesla)
Version 9 of the semi-autonomous driving system “Full Self-Driving” is supposed to be able to handle city driving and all maneuvers. Observers also expect a subscription for the assistant.
The seemingly endless sequence of appointment announcements and apologies, delays and even more excuses seems to have come to an end: Tesla is due to bring out the new version of the “Full Self-Driving” driving system on Saturday. Since this announcement also comes from the CEO personally, observers are skeptical. In May he said version 9 would be out in June. In June it was said that it was two weeks away and that this period of time also passed without anything happening. Musk originally announced a fully autonomous driving system for the end of 2019. He has since admitted that he underestimated the challenge.
Even with version 9 no level 5
Despite full-bodied sentences from Elon Musk like in January, the envisaged fully autonomous driving at level 5 still seems to be a pipe dream. He said, “I am extremely confident that this year the car will be able to drive itself with a reliability that is beyond human levels.” Auto authority DMV asked a little startled after and Tesla’s head of department for the “autopilot” waved him off. The tweet does not correspond to the technical reality. Nevertheless, it remains exciting to see what exactly the ninth edition of the system can do. Thanks to an aversion to lidar, the engineers went the route of working exclusively through cameras. For the vision-only approach, a supercomputer is used that processes the optical recordings and is later supposed to learn the driving system. Musk announced that the system does “superhuman” and works “breathtakingly”.
New interface and the beta button
Observers also expect a new interface that shows a virtual image of the environment. In the last version, the system still had to make do with squares and circles. In March, Musk also announced a button labeled “Download Beta” that would allow all Tesla drivers to download the beta. Previously, you had to apply by email to participate after inquiries flooded the company’s and its boss’ social media accounts. Even that is only possible in the USA, but version 9 should also be available in Europe this year. Elon Musk referred to “the regulators” when it came to an appointment in this country, but at least in Germany has a law for driving systems with level 4. Tesla is also said to have opted for a subscription model to monetize the autopilot. So far, many customers have paid a fixed price for the software and as a result have rarely received the range of functions that they were promised.
