Tesla continues with its incremental over-the-air software updates to second-generation Autopilot vehicles.
The most recent update brings Tesla Vision, the automaker's own proprietary technology which replaced Mobileye, just about to complete parity with first-generation Autopilot vehicles. It also takes away Autosteer's speed restrictions.
The new maximum speed for Autosteer is 90 mph (which is the same maximum from the original Autopilot system), up from the 80 mph limit that was imposed by Tesla's 8.1 update that occurred in late March.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk just announced during last week's Q1 earnings call that Tesla created its own proprietary Tesla Vision version of the Mobileye chip in just six months. Since then, some have argued that Tesla has been working on the technology for a much longer time. Also, when Musk made the announcement, the Autopilot system in second-generation vehicles was still not truly at parity. Based on this update, it is much closer, but it still isn't quite there yet.
Elon Musk said on the call (via Electrek):
“We had a bit of a dip, obviously, because of the unexpectedly rapid transition away from Mobileye, where we’d expected to have the Mobileye chip on the board as we transitioned but Mobileye refused to allow that. So then we had to basically recreate all the Mobileye functionality in about 6 months – which we did.”
The Tesla Vision Autopilot system will need automatic wipers and perpendicular park, to reach full parity with the first-generation system. This is, of course, as long as the update to Autosteer works to its full potential, without any issues.
The release notes pertaining to Autosteer speed limit read as follows:
For greater driving flexibility and comfort, we've increased the speed limit for Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control when driving on and off the highway.
- On highways: Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control have speed limits of 90 mph.
- Off highways: Autosteer is no longer restricted to 35 mph.
- Autosteer has a speed limit of 5 mph faster than the detected speed limit, unless you’ve specified a lower speed limit offset.
- If Model S does not detect a limit, then the maximum speed the vehicle can drive is 45 mph.