Tesla has put itself at the forefront of autonomous-driving technology, and the company appears not to be taking its foot off the proverbial pedal—even as it wants to allow its drivers to do exactly that. The latest news, according to a report from IEEE Spectrum, the blog for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is the release of the latest version of its Autopilot system (Version 7, which we have reported on before) to a beta-test group of Tesla Model S owner-volunteers. We assume these folks will pay a lot of attention to how little they’re paying attention, then provide copious amounts of feedback to the Tesla team before a wider rollout that’s expected to take place later this year.
According to the report, Autopilot version 7 is just a slight evolution from the previous package of driver-assistance bits, helping to better manage lane-keeping, following distance, and braking and acceleration, although Tesla CEO Elon Musk had previously promised that this version would also summon the car via your smartphone or smartwatch—on private property only, at this point. IEEE also alleges that testers will still have to oversee all operations and register their alertness by hitting the turn-signal indicator for lane changes. “”We don’t want to set the expectation that you can basically pay no attention to what the car is doing,” Musk said in a call to analysts to discuss second-quarter earnings last week. In other words, Tesla wants to ensure that the liability for any incidents is with its owners, not with the company.
Tesla spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson confirmed that Tesla is indeed testing Autopilot systems and Musk spoke of this on last week’s call to investors, although she didn’t go into specifics about exactly what features made it onto this test version of the update. But there’s no doubt that Tesla and a slew of other car companies are driving us as quickly as they can to a driverless future.
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