You might remember a couple months ago the first automobile autopilot death was reported. The poor soul was relying far too much on a Tesla Model S autopilot when the car mistook a white truck for a white sky and ran right into it on a freeway. Tesla is very clear that you should still pay full attention to the road while you use their autopilot system. It is meant as a convenience for long road trips NOT as a replacement for your own caution and discretion. But, Tesla is making big moves and rolling out lots of new cars. For the new cars, Tesla has reworked their autopilot system, now being called Autopilot 2.0. Elon Musk says the new autopilot would have prevented that man’s death.

After that tragic incident, Tesla went back to the drawing board and completely reworked the program. “It was a hard software problem. I think in term of macro, major improvements, yes, we are almost reaching the limits, but it is important to emphasise that the fleet learning will continue and the intelligence o f how that fleet learning is applied to the car will continue to improve.”

What that means is they’re already reaching the limit of what the hardware is capable of i.e. radar and camera technology. So they had to go back and do a major software overhaul. The new system will rely less on cameras and more on radar data. Tesla has said that the most challenging aspect was to deliver improving results while restricted to the limited processing power that can be found onboard a vehicle. The new 2.0 relies on a dedicated computing channel so that the car can calculate even faster.

Elon Musk said, “So while we are reaching the limit of the hardware, I think we have not quite yet reached the algorithmic intelligence on the car and of course, anything that’s done on our servers – where we are not computer constraint or space constraint in any way. I think, in fact I’m quite certain that it would continue to improve quite a lot just because the software and the data would improve quite an enormous amount.” All that means is in order to improve the way Musk wants to, they’ll have to significantly alter their current technology. We may see a radically evolved Tesla somewhere down the line and we have no doubt that those cars will be the future just as they’re the future today.