Consumer Reports has been testing Tesla’s latest ‘Autopilot’ update (v7.1) since its unveiling last month and especially the new feature called ‘Summon’, which allows Tesla owners to remotely move their vehicle without anyone in it.
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Last month Tesla released its latest ‘Autopilot’ update (v7.1), which we covered intensively, but if you are not up-to-date with Tesla’s latest software, the Model S’ Autopilot now includes a new feature called ‘Summon’, which allows Tesla owners to remotely move their vehicle without anyone in it.
At the moment, it is primarily used to get the Model S in and out of a garage easily, but in the future, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says you will be able to summon your car from across the country and it will come meet you while charging at Tesla Superchargers along the way.
In its latest video, Drag Times demonstrated a potential application for Tesla’s latest feature. Drag Times used the new ‘Summon’ feature to autonomously move the Model S a few dozen feet to “save” the owner from the rain by picking him up under a porte-cochère.
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Tesla’s ‘Summon’ feature got most of the attention after the release of the version 7.1 of its software pushed via an over-the-air update this weekend, but the Autopilot’s ‘Autosteer’ feature also got a significant upgrade, which the following video beautifully highlights.
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Elon Musk held a press conference with Q&A yesterday for the release of Tesla’s software update v7.1 for the Model S and X. You can find a recording of the call below and a few highlights of the discussion.
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After the well-documented release notes of the 7.1 update for the Model S and X Saturday, Tesla published a short blog update on Sunday and held a press conference to reveal its ambitions for the future of the ‘Summon’ feature, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to describes what he calls the “first baby step” of the ‘Summon’ capability and its potential for the future.
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The new “Summon” feature received most of the attention after yesterday’s release of Tesla’s software v7.1, but the automaker also released ‘auto perpendicular parking’, which adds to the ‘auto parallel park’ feature Tesla released in October with the update v7.0.
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Tesla released today the version 7.1 of its software for the Model S and X. The new update includes everything we told you about when Tesla started testing the build with beta testers last month: UI improvements, a new self-parking feature, ‘Driver Mode’ and Autopilot restrictions, but the automaker is also introducing the “Summon” feature, which enables the Model S to drive itself without anyone in the car.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at Stanford’s FutureFest recently and he described how he evaluates the progress and a timeline for artificial intelligence:
“If any given year you find your predictions are going further out or coming closer in, that actually one way to think of acceleration [of progress] because otherwise what’s the quantitative measure of AI?”
During the same talk, which took place in October, Musk said that fully autonomous cars are about 3 years away, a prediction he made several times in the past year or so. But today we learn that Musk updated his prediction to just 2 years.
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Tesla released today a new update to some Performance Model S owners. The update includes some incremental improvements and an all new feature called ‘Launch Mode’. The new feature assists the driver to accelerate from a standing start, much like a launch control for a race car.
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We recently reported on Tesla starting to push new Autopilot restrictions to some Model S owners last Sunday – about a month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned of upcoming constraints to limit some potentially dangerous use of the Autopilot as seen in videos posted online.
The Model S owners reporting on forums having received the update with new Autopilot restrictions have quickly removed their posts. We now learn through sources with knowledge of matter that Tesla started testing the new version 7.1 of its software with a select group of Model S owners this week.
The new update includes UI improvements, a new self-parking feature, ‘Driver Mode’ and Autopilot restrictions.
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