Tesla Motors Inc. has announced that all new vehicles it produces will now be equipped with the hardware needed for full self-driving capability.

The technology being fitted to the new Teslas includes eight surround cameras that provides 360 degree visibility around the car out to 250 meters and 12 updated ultrasonic sensors that allow for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. Also, a forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides the vehicle with additional data about the world around it on a redundant wavelength, including being capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and, perhaps remarkably, even the car ahead.

To run the new technology, a new computer that is said to be 40 times more powerful that the previous computers installed in Tesla’s, will provide a neural net for vision sonar and radar processing software, allowing the vehicle to see in every direction “and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses.”

While the new hardware sounds impressive, the cars themselves will not actually be able to drive themselves until such time as Tesla releases the software to do so, which it says will occur once it has calibrated the system “using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience.”

During the testing period, the new Teslas will also lack autopilot features available on previous models, including automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control.

“Self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future,” Tesla founder Elon Musk said in an announcement post. “Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.”

Safety aspects

In a conference call, Musk emphasized the safety aspects of the project, with Recode reporting that he said, “There are many more minor accidents and serious accidents than there are fatalities that provides a much richer statistical sample set for comparing the relative safety of autonomy versus not autonomy … We see significantly better [results] with autonomy than without. That just gets better over time as the system is further refined.”

In a dig at the negative press that followed the death of a driver who was using Tesla’s autopilot feature, Musk said anyone who discourages the use of autonomous technology is promoting death, noting that “if you’re writing an article that’s negative that essentially dissuades people from using [autonomous tech], you’re killing people.”

Updates to the new Teslas, including the gradual additional of autonomous features, will begin within two to three months.

Image credit: Tesla