Tesla’s much-anticipated Full Self-Driving beta is rolling out now

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the Full Self-Driving beta for Tesla vehicles is underway, in a tweet late on Tuesday, October 20. He characterized it as “extremely slow & cautious, as it should.”

We’ve been waiting for news of this beta since last month when it was announced at Tesla’s Battery Day. That beta is going to only “a small number” of “expert and careful drivers” among the pool of Tesla owners. That’s the power of having metrics about all of the cars that are being driven, letting you drill down into the data to find the best candidates.

FSD beta rollout happening tonight. Will be extremely slow & cautious, as it should.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2020

The beta update is the largest change to Tesla’s Autopilot system to date. The current system uses 2D images to label objects in its identification stack, which is fine as a driver aid but the system needed an overhaul to get to Full Self`Driving status. That change was to rewrite the software stack to shift to identifying and tagging 3D video from all of the eight cameras on every Tesla, giving it multiple feeds to cross-reference while driving.

The details on how deep the Full Self-Driving beta goes are scant at this time, but one expected change is to expand on the current “traffic light and stop sign control” routines to allow turns inside intersections. I don’t know about you, but I feel nervous doing turns inside intersections manually, never mind letting a computer do it.

What do you think? Are you excited about Full Self-Driving in Tesla vehicles? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.