Tesla has always been touting its autopilot program as somewhat a stepping stone towards a proper and complete autonomous program for their existing cars. Whilst incidents around the US which have claimed lives in numerous accidents, Tesla still maintains its name, Autopilot, but with the vision that someday it can be a fully self-driving program.
That day seems to be getting closer as Engadget has reported that CEO, Elon Musk, has sent out internal memos to employees looking for volunteers to be part of the self-driving testing program. As of now, it isn’t sure whether the self-driving feature would be a free upgrade for the employees or they would have to pay $8,000 for the Full Self-Driving Capability package. Musk said that the new Hardware 3 which is part of this round of test is 1000% better than the previous hardware.
Tesla is still behind the likes of other companies when it comes to autonomous self-driving based on public perception but Musk has always been one to keep a good secret and who knows, with all of the available data that Tesla has already captured with their vehicles on the road, self-driving technology may come rather sooner instead. This would be the second round in which Musk has asked for another group of testers within Tesla to take part.
