Tesla announces 1 billion driverless miles

November 30, 2018  - By
Image: GPS World
Image: GPS World

“As of today [Nov. 28] Tesla owners have driven 1 billion miles with Autopilot engaged,” the company announced via tweet.

The Autopilot feature became available in 2015 and now comes  on all new Tesla models with a $5,000 activation fee at the time of purchase or $7,000 if selected later.

The company is training its “neural networks” to improve its self-driving system.

Photo: Tesla

Photo: Tesla

Tesla’s global fleet totals more than half a million vehicles, and recently marked a 20-billion mile step of total electric miles driven, the company said.

The Autopilot system can also function in the background of the vehicle, without being activated and with no input on control. Thus it gathers data from many more billions of “drivered” miles about its environment and potential Autopilot behavior.

The company previously mentioned the 1 billion-mile autonomous mark as the minimum it would need to move Autosteer from beta to a regular feature.

Updates to Autopilot are planned for 2019, including new hardware that will aid in the rollout of the company’s Full Self-Driving system, possibly by the end of that year.