Tesla Autopilot
Tesla Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance system developed by Tesla, Inc. that provides partial vehicle automation, corresponding to Level 2 automation as defined by SAE International. All Tesla vehicles produced after April 2019 include Autopilot, which features autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control. Customers can purchase or subscribe to an optional package called "Full Self-Driving ", also known as "FSD", which adds features such as semi-autonomous navigation, response to traffic lights and stop signs, lane change assistance, self-parking, and the ability to summon the car from a parking space.
Since 2013, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly predicted that the company would achieve fully autonomous driving within one to three years, but these goals are still to be met. The branding of Full Self-Driving has drawn criticism for potentially misleading consumers. Tesla vehicles currently operate at Level 2 automation, which requires continuous driver supervision and does not constitute "full" self-driving capability. Previously, the Autopilot branding was also criticized for similar reasons, despite the fact that no autopilot system in aircraft rendered them fully autonomous.
Tesla claims that its driver-assistance features improve safety and reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue or inattention. However, collisions and fatalities involving Autopilot have attracted scrutiny from media and regulators. Industry experts and safety advocates have raised concerns about the deployment of beta software to the general public, calling the practice risky and potentially irresponsible.
History
first discussed the Tesla Autopilot system publicly in 2013, noting that "Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars." At the time, no autopilot system in aircraft rendered them fully autonomous. Over the ensuing decade, Autopilot went through a series of hardware and software enhancements, gradually approaching the goal of full autonomy, which, as of 2025, remains unmet. Autopilot, as initially introduced in 2014, referred to automatic parking and low-speed summoning on private property, using sensor and computing hardware developed by Mobileye. By 2016, the Mobileye-based Autopilot had added automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and lane centering capabilities, but Tesla and Mobileye dissolved their partnership that July. Enhanced Autopilot was announced later in 2016 as an extra-cost option that used a new hardware suite developed by Tesla; the key distinguishing feature for EAP, "Navigate on Autopilot", which uses the new hardware suite to guide the vehicle on controlled-access roads, from on-ramp to off-ramp, was delayed until 2018. At the same time that EAP was introduced, Tesla also offered Full Self-Driving as an upgrade option to EAP in 2016, which would extend machine-guided driving capabilities to local roads. FSD beta testing started in October 2020.At the time the "Paint it Black" video was released in 2016, FSD was acknowledged to be "some way off in the future." The option to purchase the FSD upgrade to EAP was removed from Tesla's website in October 2018; Elon Musk tweeted the upgrade was "causing too much confusion". Technology analyst Rob Enderle called the removal of the upgrade option "incredibly stupid", adding "don't release a system that doesn't work and make it hard to order." During a January 2019 earnings call, Elon Musk reiterated "full self-driving capability is there", referring to "Navigate on Autopilot", an EAP feature limited to controlled-access highways. The EAP option was replaced by FSD in 2019 without offering "Navigate on Autopilot"-like functionality for local roads; autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control were transferred to the basic Autopilot feature set, which was made standard on all new Teslas.
In September 2020, Tesla reintroduced the term Enhanced Autopilot to distinguish the existing subset of features which included high-speed highway travel and low-speed parking and summoning, from FSD, which would add medium-speed city road travel. Tesla released a "beta" version of its FSD software in the United States in October 2020 to EAP testers. The EAP option tier was made available to all buyers by June 2022 and the FSD beta had expanded to 160,000 testers in the United States and Canada by September. In November 2022, the FSD beta was extended to all owners in North America who had purchased the option. In April 2024, EAP was removed from the North American design pages. However, it is still available for purchase in other markets.
Hardware iterations
Hardware 1 and Autopilot (Mobileye)
In October 2014, Tesla offered customers the ability to pre-purchase Autopilot that was not designed for self-driving. Initial versions were built in partnership with Mobileye, but Mobileye ended the partnership in July 2016 because Tesla "was pushing the envelope in terms of safety".Vehicles manufactured after September 2014 included Hardware 1, which supported Autopilot. The first Autopilot software release came in October 2015 as part of Tesla software version 7.0. Version 7.1 removed some features to discourage risky driving.
Version 8.0 processed radar signals to create a point cloud similar to lidar to help navigate in low visibility. In November 2016, Autopilot 8.0 was updated to encourage drivers to grip the steering wheel. By November 2016, Autopilot had operated for 300 million miles.
Hardware 2
In October 2016, Autopilot sensors and computing hardware transitioned to Hardware 2 for new cars, the upgraded hardware collectively was called Autopilot 2.0 to distinguish it from the original Autopilot/HW1 vehicles. At the time it was launched, Autopilot 2.0 vehicles with HW2 actually had fewer features than HW1 vehicles; for example, HW2 vehicles were unable to be summoned in 2016.Tesla also used the term Enhanced Autopilot to refer to planned capabilities that would be coming to HW2 vehicles - the signature EAP feature announced in December 2016 was "Navigate on Autopilot", which allows machine-controlled driving on controlled-access highways from on-ramp to off-ramp, including the abilities to change lanes without driver input, transition from one freeway to another, and exit. HW2 vehicles were updated in January and February 2017 with software version 8.0, which included Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer on divided highways and 'local roads' up to speeds of. Version 8.0 also put more emphasis on the radar system, in an attempt to try to avoid problems like the fatal 2016 Autopilot crash in Florida. Software version 8.1 for HW2 arrived in March 2017, providing HW2 cars features on par with HW1 cars, but did not include "Navigate on Autopilot".
In August 2017, Tesla announced Hardware 2.5, which upgraded the on-board processor and added redundant systems. Software version 9.0 was released in October 2018 in preparation for the release of "Navigate on Autopilot" for HW2/HW2.5 vehicles with EAP, which was implemented later that month. Simultaneously, Tesla removed the option to purchase the "Full Self-Driving" upgrade. In a November 2018 test drive, The Verge reporter Andrew J. Hawkins called the beta of Navigate on Autopilot "the feature that could give Tesla an edge as it grows from niche company to global powerhouse". As initially released, Navigate on Autopilot would suggest lane changes, but could not change lanes until the suggestion had been confirmed by the driver through the turn signal stalk.
Hardware 3
In March 2019, Tesla transitioned to Hardware 3 for new cars. Completely automated lane changes without requiring driver confirmation using "Navigate on Autopilot" were added as an option in an April software update, although Consumer Reports called it "far less competent" than a human driver. To comply with the new United Nations Economic Commission for Europe regulation related to automatically commanded steering function, Tesla provided an updated Autopilot in May, limited to Europe. In September, Tesla released software version 10 to Early Access Program testers, citing improvements in driving visualization and automatic lane changes.In 2021, Tesla began transitioning from using radar to only using Tesla Vision. In October 2022 it provided its reasoning, citing "safety." Vehicles manufactured after 2022 do not include radar or ultrasonic sensors.
Hardware 4
Samsung makes the processor for Hardware 4 on a 7 nm process. The custom System on a chip is called "FSD Computer 2". The board has 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, which are two and four times the RAM and storage in HW3 respectively. Musk stated that HW4 computational capabilities are three to eight times more powerful than HW3. A tear down of a HW4 Model S and Model X car in 2023 revealed that they have high definition radar hardware, but the software did not use radar.Tesla started shipping cars with HW4 in January 2023, starting with the refreshed Model S and Model Y; however, FSD was not available initially. It took six months before HW4-based cars ran camera-based software. Despite the increased image sensor resolution with HW4-equipped cars, HW4 initially ran the FSD software by emulating HW3, including downsizing the camera images - a result of Tesla postponing training based on the new HW4 cameras. Musk stated that the HW4-specific training of FSD would start after the new data center is finished at the Texas Gigafactory.
In October 2024, FSD version 12.5.6 released exclusively to HW4-equipped vehicles, featuring a model trained on HW4 data. This trend has continued with the release of version 13.