According to Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, by the year 2017 one of their cars could make the trip from L.A. to NYC without any driver behind the wheel.
On Wednesday Elon revealed that an enhanced version of the autopilot software in their electric vehicles would soon be available. He shared that the software would be able to transport someone from “a home in L.A., to Times Square … without the need for a single touch, including the charging.”
In addition to the new software, they will be making changes to the current car models, such as adding cameras and sensors that will watch and respond more quickly to things happening around the car.
The Model 3 will launch in 2017, but Tesla has warned that the new features will not be activated immediately since they need to test “millions of miles of real-world driving” before passing it off to the customer. There has been one reported death so far using Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system, which is of course something that they would want to avoid happening in the future.
The U.S. Department of Transportation recently issued the first federal guidelines covering self-driving vehicles, which proves that the technology is being taken seriously.
