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Availability · October 2015

Tesla Autopilot

Tesla switched on partial autonomy by an over-the-air update to cars already sold, and thousands of drivers had it overnight.

Why it matters

Autonomous features reached ordinary owners for the first time, and testing began happening on public roads rather than a test track.

The approach is the opposite of Google's: not laser scanners and detailed maps but cameras, radar and learning from the company's own fleet. The first version was built on Mobileye's vision system; the partnership ended in 2016 after a fatal crash in Florida. The gap between the name Autopilot and the actual level of autonomy became the subject of regulatory investigations.

Event record

Event date
October 2015
Timeline date
Event date
Verification
Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026
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ID
evt-0260

The feature was rolled out by an over-the-air update on 14 October 2015.

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