From Now On, All Tesla Models Will Be Able To Drive Themselves

After a two day delay, Tesla announced a suite of hardware changes to its models which in the future, will allow for full self-driving.

In a blog post, the Silicon Valley automaker confirmed that from today, every Tesla vehicle built - and that includes the upcoming Model 3 - will be installed with eight surround cameras providing 360 degrees of visibility around the car at up to 250 meters / 820 feet of range. Additionally, changes to the firm's self-driving system include twelve updated ultrasonic sensors capable of detecting objects at almost twice the distance of existing Tesla models.

Finally, the hardware changes include an improved forward-facing radar which utilizes a redundant wavelength to enable the vehicle to see through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the vehicle ahead.

All of this additional data is now processed through an improved onboard computer which Tesla claims has “more than 40 times the computing power” of the previous system. 

Tesla says that the new system and features will be calibrated via real-world driving provided by the firm's customers. As the system is calibrated, it will lack a host of features currently offered by the first-generation Autopilot hardware. Most significantly, the new cars will initially lack collision warning, lane holding, active cruise control and automatic emergency braking.

Once the features have been validated with the new hardware, they will be enabled over the air.