How Does Tesla's Autopilot Work?

Even the most ardent Elon Musk stan will admit their lord and saviour hasn’t exactly delivered on his promise of properly autonomous self-driving vehicles. Yet, anyway. Tesla’s flamboyant CEO has repeatedly suggested we’d be there by now, and, frankly, we aren’t. But the so-called Autopilot feature available on all modern Teslas is a marvellous feat of engineering nonetheless.

What enables it to detect hazards up ahead? How does it then go about making sense of that information? Is it better at driving than human beings? Join us today as we pop the metaphorical hood and take a peek into how Autopilot actually works.

For an eye-opening introduction to just how sophisticated Tesla’s driving algorithm has become of late, take a look at this video released back in January 2020.

SUGGEST A TOPIC

Imagery supplied via Getty Images

How Tesla's Autopilot Works

[RacefanPat]

You ignored FSD Beta completely! It will drive you anywhere and is between level 4-5. Look up Sandy Munro or most experts. FSD is a million miles ahead of autopilot, and you even had the audacity to show clips of it driving. Autopilot is also not supposed to be used as a self driving program, so both of the examples you cited of accidents where when it was being misused, but still, the stats show that the average american car crashes every 1.5 million miles, Teslas every 5 million I think, and with Autopilot it is 4 times as far again. It is dozens of times safer, but EVERY SINGLE accident is shown on every single news, in every single country, all over the world. Its like the battery fires, all 3 of them. There are 1 MILLION gas fires a year, in the us alone!

[jj]

Although there have been some select few crashes with Teslas, I think it's still probably much more reliable in avoiding crashes than most human drivers behind a wheel. There are some bad drivers out there all over the country. Someday when most have self driving cars way in the future, I think it will make the roads a lot more efficient so there aren't crashes and long backups on the road.

[Dom_Low]

It’s astonishing how fast Tesla and all of Elon Musk’s businesses are advancing. No one makes me more excited for the future then him!

[MrShahramk]

With every update you can feel the improvement if you are using the autopilot a lot. I drive from bay area to LA a lot and I usually don't even have a single disengagement. Pretty cool and I can enjoy the drive more.

[bunnygirl]

Imagine Tesla's talking to each other..

[theprimest]

Just If anyone didn't know Tesla, is creating cars that can now autonomously run on their own and become a self sufficient robotaxi earning you income while you sleep and while your at work. It's pretty incredible my guess is Elon will become the world's first Trillionaire

[lostcoastcannabis]

what I can say is that we asked for it and there’s no turning back now

[rodfatherfishing]

You either don't know about the FSD beta or you are purposely leaving it out? FSD is coming in the next 2 years and I'm buying all the tesla stock I can afford 😆

[JasonB]

Self driving modes were in beta mode until recently. The full self driving package is now a 10, 000 dollar upgrade. This is because they reduced the price of their cars a couple thousand dollars. I believe that Tesla is also working on making the full self driving feature a monthly service rather than large one time payment which would be nice.

[virtuallyreal]

Auto pilot in it self means that its only control of the driving when a straight route is set, like in planes
I think autopilot can be granted permissions but they need to wait of full self driving

[srishtisharma]

thanks for the information it helped me in completing my assignment.

[nahiag]

How is it possible to make a video about Teslas "autonomous self-driving vehicles" without mentioning the FSD beta?

[young-mi]

It's not level 2, FSD is 4 near 5. People need to have this info.

[shashankvishwakarma]

I don't know how Tesla's gonna work in India ....

[SweBeach]

Autonomous driving hold so much promise, from car pooling to leaving the owner downtown for work while returning to a less densely part for charging in the daytime to very cheap taxi rides when a driver doesn't have to be paid.

[himanshuop]

Imagine your car reaches your office before you sit in it.

[playbassken]

Very informative and you have to really admire this technology. Especially those behind its creation. AI and robotics are clearly the path of the future.

[leifjohnson]

I think that Tesla's overall design of their autonomous self-driving functionality is way, way head of what its competitors are working on. Plus, because Tesla has so many cars on the road, with every day that passes Tesla is gathering more and more data to make their autonomous self-driving the leader in the industry.

[bobgwin]

My model Y has autopilot but is not Full Self Driving (FSD). Autopilot is not "available" on all vehicles but is standard. FSD is a separate feature and costs much more. So many reviews and conversations confuse the features of the two.

[foxxfoxx]

"autopilot isn't ready yet" . How about FSD (Full Self Driving) which was conveniently left out?