Day In The Life Of An Autopilot-Equipped Tesla (Video)
A new official Tesla Motors video shows off the current state of the Tesla autopilot suite and asks/teases/challenges viewers to “Revolutionize Your Commute.” The engaging video walks through a day in the life of an autopilot-enabled Model S and demos many of the newly added autopilot features, like: Summon, Autosteer, Auto Lane Change, and Autopark.
It opens with the car being summoned out of its nightly slumber via iPhone, which is great considering it doesn’t require the owner to leave the house. The one caveat to Summon that’s not being talked about is that the car must be unplugged before it can be summoned. This means that a trip to the garage or wherever the car is parked is still required and will likely lead to less charging at home… at least until the automated charger is pushed into production.
A post over at the official Tesla Motors forum details how to get this function to show up on the iPhone app, as it doesn’t always appear automagically:
1. Enable Summon on car
2. Unplug car from charger
3. Delete current Tesla iPhone app
4. Go to Apple App Store and get the latest Tesla app
5. Open app. The Summon function is now on the Home tab. The Summon notifications should also be checked on the Notifications menu.
Autosteer shows off how well it works on freeways, which is right along the lines of what I experienced when I tested it out. Elon mentioned in a recent interview that it does really well at high speeds on freeways when the lines are visible and that it works well in stop and go traffic. Being completely transparent, there were more than a few times on my crazy cross country road trip that I wished my Model S had Autopilot, but it just wasn’t worth it to me for my typical day-to-day commute of ~9 miles or so.
On a related note, while Supercharging the other day, I noticed that the front of the Autopilot-enabled Model S is visibly different from the non-Autopilot version. An additional sensor window is visible in the lower vent window and smaller circular sensors are visible in the primary nosecone.
This video is also spliced in as the new backdrop on the Tesla Motors homepage, which is a fun addition. Check it out for yourself below:
Image Credit: Kyle Field
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