Tesla launches ‘Full Self Driving’ beta to select drivers

The customers in Tesla's Early Access Programme will receive software updates, which will give drivers access to Autopilot's ‘partially' automated driver assistance system on city streets.

San Francisco: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed the company has started rolling out its next-gen Full Self Driving (FSD) set of features to a limited number of expert and careful drivers.

The customers in Tesla’s Early Access Programme will receive software updates, which will give drivers access to Autopilot’s ‘partially’ automated driver assistance system on city streets.

The Early Access program serves as a testing platform to help fix software bugs.

More Tesla owners would get the update as the time passes, with the goal of a “wide release” by the end of the year.

“Regarding the Full Self-Driving beta release, the Autopilot team, again, is just a really all-star team. I spent a lot of time with the Autopilot team. And there’s a lot of really talented people in that team who have worked incredibly hard to make the — to get the beta release out,” Musk said during the company’s Q3 earnings call on Wednesday.

Musk has been talking about ‘Full Self Driving’ a lot in the past couple of years, calling it an investment in the future that will become far more valuable once fully autonomous cars get regulatory approval.

Earlier, he explained that with feature-complete FSD, the car will be able to drive without human intervention but it would still be supervised.

Tesla also rolled out the 2019.40.2 version of its software to some electric vehicle owners and this update includes features like Adjacent Lane Speed Adjustments and Stop Sign Detection that are required for FSD.