Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced at the Cyber Rodeo party in Austin that the company aims to roll out its full self-driving beta software to all North American customers this year. Anyone who has paid for the driver assistance package or has access to it through the subscription model will get the ability to use FSD on city streets.
“The Tesla Autopilot team and AI team has done an incredible job building real-world AI and we’re able to go to wide beta for all full self-driving customers in North America this year,” Musk said during the live-streamed speech at the opening of the new Texas-based Giga factory.
Even though Full Self Driving, or FSD, has been available as an add-on option for Tesla vehicles for years, actual autonomous driving capabilities haven’t been achieved yet. At the moment, Tesla automobiles come equipped with Autopilot, a driver assistance technology that may be upgraded to FSD for an extra $12,000.
The package currently delivers the parking feature Summon as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active guidance system that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and lane changes, which is now also operational on city streets.
Cyber Rodeo
The FSD beta is the company's early version of its self-driving software that is currently being tested by a fleet of Tesla owners selected by the company and through the company's 'Safety Score' grading system.
Tesla said in its Q4 shareholder letter that 60,000 Tesla owners had gained access to the FSD beta software. Earlier this month Tesla also released the FSD beta software outside of the US for the first time. The software is now being tested in Canada, and Tesla hopes to release the beta in Europe later this year.
The software allows the car to drive itself to a destination put into the navigation system, but the driver must stay alert and ready to take control at all times. For this reason, the FSD is still classified as a level two driver-assist system. Tesla keeps regularly updating the software every couple of weeks and adding more owners to it.
