Speaking to journalists about the software update, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he believed this upgraded Autopilot system would have prevented the fatal autopilot crash that happened earlier this year.
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Tesla Motors’ plan to upgrade the Autopilot system in its vehicles could boost confidence in the company, according to analysts.
The updates will be put into place within the next two weeks and cars will be automatically updated. They will affect Tesla vehicles built since October 2014, before which hardware used by Autopilot wasn’t included.
The company is making the change after Joshua Brown was killed when the Autopilot in his Tesla Model S failed to recognize a truck in his path and initiate braking.
No date has been announced for the conclusion of the investigation, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the BBC.
“Perfect safety is really an impossible goal”, Mr Musk said while discussing the update, which was developed over the past three to four months. “The impact probability would be assessed as high and so it would break”, Musk said. “This is not going from bad to good”.
The company has had big problems trying to overcome the challenges posed by using radar in such a localised way, due to the odd ways the technology reacts to different objects and shapes.
In spite of the new update, which is purely software, Tesla cars will not get fully autonomous driving abilities, but more capabilities for the Autopilot system. Consumer Reports, for example, wrote that Autopilot was “too much autonomy too soon”. The updated system will temporarily prevent drivers from using it if they fail to respond to audible warnings to take back control of the vehicle.
Mr. Musk has vigorously defended the Autopilot technology, saying it improves safety. It slows the vehicles if they don’t respond.
Following an investigation, it was determined Tesla’s software did not pick up an oncoming trailer due to the “brightly lit sky” that obscured both human and machine, resulting in the auto colliding with the trailer. The radar transmitter receiver is placed at the centre on the lower grill, implying that the vehicle in front of a Tesla auto require being “very very low” to block signals.
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“The big problem in using radar to stop the vehicle is avoiding false alarms”, Mr. Musk wrote in a blog post on the company’s website. “A discarded soda can on the road, with its concave bottom facing towards you can appear to be a large and risky obstacle, but you would definitely not want to slam on the brakes to avoid it”.
