Tesla raised the bar for the in-car infotainment experience with its massive 17″ displays in the Model S and X, then flipped things on their side with a 15″ landscape display in the Model 3. The large, responsive touchscreens brought the familiar interface from all of our smart devices into the car while allowing almost endless opportunities to innovate through future software updates.
Covering the news often entails digging into the details of the latest developments in the cleantech space, which can often result in the broader theme of progress in the cleantech space getting lost. Reader and friend of CleanTechnica Dominic suggested that we write up a chronicle of news in the cleantech world to highlight not just the hottest stories of the day, but the broader themes playing out in the space. This article is our first attempt at this.
Can Tesla smears and then biased regulatory slow-walking delay Tesla Full Self Driving for years?
Tesla’s Autopilot has been hailed as the ultimate platform for developing a fully autonomous driving solution. After 8 months of owning our Tesla Model 3, Tesla shrunk down the base Autopilot package by removing a few features, and at the same time dropping the after-purchase price from $7,000 for Enhanced Autopilot to $4,000 for the new Autopilot package. It felt like the right time to pull the trigger on the update, so we made the purchase on March 1st.
Tesla never stops moving, and its software is the most dynamic part of the machine. This week, Tesla announced via a blog post that it is rolling out a more polished version of its popular Navigate-on-Autopilot feature that includes an option to automatically change lanes, without confirmation from the driver.
After Tesla lowered the pricing of all of its new vehicles last week, Tesla offered up discounts on its newly reframed Autopilot and Full Self Driving options for existing owners as a way of compensating them for the loss in value they experienced virtually overnight.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to tweets this evening to break the news that the new Autopilot feature “Drive on Navigation” would be pushed to out to the fleet of production vehicles starting tonight. When similar news broke for the release of Tesla’s version 9.0, the release was spread out over nearly two weeks as eager owners helicoptered over their smart devices waiting for a software update notification (including me).
Version 9.0 of Tesla’s in-car software brought what was perhaps the largest goodie bag of new features to its vehicles that we have seen to date. Bundled into the update was a new feature that promised to give owners a “Full 360 degree view” of the car in the Autopilot display.
Tesla has officially taken the wraps off of highly anticipated version 9.0 of its firmware. A blast of updates have been sent to drivers via email, a Tesla blog post, an official support post, and even a Twitter thread to introduce the update.
