Tesla Autopilot

Tesla Autopilot/FSD is an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) 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 provides autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control. As of February 2026, customers can subscribe to an optional Level 2 package called "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" (FSD), which adds semi-autonomous navigation on nearly all roads, self-parking, and the ability to summon the car from a parking space. In May 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that recent Tesla Model Ys are the first cars to pass the agency’s new benchmark for advanced driver assistance systems. Since 2013, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly predicted that the company would achieve fully autonomous driving (SAE Level 5) within one to three years, but as of July 2026, these goals are still to be met. The branding of Full Self-Driving has drawn criticism for potentially misleading consumers. Tesla vehicles currently require continuous driver supervision which does not constitute full self-driving capability. Previously, the Autopilot branding was criticized for similar reasons, despite the fact that no autopilot system in aircraft rendered them fully autonomous. Tesla states that its driver-assistance features improve safety and reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue or inattention. However, collisions and fatalities involving Autopilot and FSD have attracted scrutiny from media and regulators. Industry experts and safety advocates have raised concerns about the deployment of the software to the general public, calling the practice risky and potentially irresponsible.

History Elon Musk 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 April 2026, 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 (AEB), adaptive cruise control (ACC), and lane centering capabilities, but Tesla and Mobileye dissolved their partnership that July. Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) was announced in late 2016 as an extra-cost option that used a new hardware suite developed by Tesla. The release of the key EAP feature "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. When EAP was announced in 2016, Tesla also offered for purchase Full Self-Driving (FSD) as an upgrade option to EAP, which extended machine-guided driving capabilities to local roads. When the "Paint it Black" video demonstrating FSD was released in 2016, actual 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 (which extended "Navigate on Autopilot"-like machine-controlled driving and navigation to 'local roads') 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, although 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 (HW1), 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 (480 million km).

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