Tesla starts pushing new ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ to entire fleet in shadow mode only

After delaying the latest update that was supposed to come last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has now confirmed that the automaker started pushing the ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ update early this morning to the entire fleet of vehicles equipped with the second generation Autopilot hardware, but the update will only operate in shadow mode for now.

Only about 1,000 cars received the active update earlier this month, while other vehicles had a version of the system running in shadow mode, which means that the system is active in the vehicle, but it doesn’t take the controls. It gathers data to improve the system and assure that it is safe.

The update has been referred to as ‘the first phase of Enhanced Autopilot’ since it introduces Autopilot features using the new hardware and the company’s ‘Tesla Vision’ image processing system.

It also represents the biggest step in bringing the new Autopilot to parity with the last version. It includes the Autopilot’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control feature, Forward Collision Warning, and Autosteer, but it is only enabled at “low-speed” as a beta feature for now.

Musk confirmed that the update is being pushed to the broader fleet today:

HW2 Autopilot now downloading to all HW2 cars, but in non-actuating mode to assess reliability. If looks good, actuation by end of week.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2017

If you have a Model S or X with the new Autopilot and you are receiving a new update this morning without any release notes, this is why.

The full release notes should be pushed by the end of the week if the shadow mode can prove reliability as Musk pointed out.

You can access the version of the release notes used for the first 1,000 cars with Autopilot 2.0 hardware here.

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