Tesla Downloads An Autopilot Into Its Cars—But It Needs On-The-Job Training

The ability to drive a car when you want to, and hand over control to a computer when you don’t, just got a little closer to becoming a reality for Tesla Model S owners as the electric-car builder launched its much-hyped Autopilot feature today, via a wireless automatic software update.

Co-founder and CEO Elon Musk said Autopilot will allow the battery-powered sedan (at least those built in the past year with the proper sensors) to drive itself on the freeway and parallel-park automatically when the trip is over.

“We think of it as a public beta—we want people to be quite careful with it,” Musk said, later adding: “Eventually, we want it to automatically have your car put itself to bed in your garage.”

For now, Autopilot is the combination of an elegant lane-keeping system and adaptive cruise control. It allows the car to steer within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal and manage speed via Tesla’s already impressive Traffic Aware Cruise array Control (TACC) system. It does so by leveraging situational data compiled using the car’s current sensor array, which consists of a forward-facing camera mounted in the windshield mirror cluster, radar located in the front grille, and a dozen or so ultrasonic sensors sunk into the front and rear bumpers.

Currently, TACC gauges the distance between a Model S and the car it is following. If the following distance grows short, the system automatically slows the vehicle to compensate or stops it completely in an emergency. It also brings the vehicle back up to speed when traffic starts to move again.

Autopilot adds auto steering functionality to the mix. During a brief demonstration of the technology on Manhattan’s busy and often frenzied Westside Highway, Autopilot worked as advertised. After double-tapping the cruise control arm located just behind the steering wheel, the car instantly took over. The transition from driving to driven was seamless. After removing my hands from the steering wheel, the car handled steering, acceleration, and braking duties without hesitation. With minutes, I was comfortable in the hands of a computer, even in brutal downtown Manhattan traffic.