Tesla owners are beginning to receive messages on their cars offering a free 30-day trial of Enhanced Autopilot, with the message “Completely happy Holidays!” from Tesla.
The messages began showing up on social media, posted by owners in Australia and Recent Zealand. Notably, this began happening when it was early enough for people to be awake in those countries, but while it was late night or very early morning within the US and EU.
So we don’t know yet if it is a global giveaway or only within the Oceania region, but we suspect we’ll discover soon enough as the remainder of the world wakes up and goes for a drive. We see no reason that it will be restricted to AU/NZ, so perhaps it just must propagate to the remainder of the world because the day moves on.
The message reads “Completely happy Holidays! A complimentary trial of Enhanced Autopilot has been enabled so that you can enjoy for 30 days.” It then describes to drivers tips on how to enable various Autopilot features, which have to be done while the vehicle is parked before the primary time each individual driver profile attempts to make use of the system.
All Teslas come equipped with Autopilot, Tesla’s brand name for its driver-assist technology. Basic Autopilot includes traffic-aware cruise control, which follows the automobile in front of you, and autosteer, which keeps the automobile in its lane on highways.
Enhanced Autopilot is a further package that adds more capabilities. Tesla has offered it as a separate package on and off over time, and brought it back in June with its current price point of $6,000 (or $5,100 AUD/$5,700 NZD, within the countries we’ve seen this giveaway in thus far).
Enhanced Autopilot includes these features, over and above Basic Autopilot:
- Auto Lane Change: Assists in moving to an adjoining lane on the motorway when indicator is engaged by driver.
- Navigate on Autopilot (Beta): Actively augments Auto Lane Change by providing guidance to the motive force to transit motorway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting lane changes and navigating interchanges.
- Autopark: Helps parallel or perpendicular park your automobile, with a single touch.
- Summon: Moves your automobile out and in of a decent space using the mobile app.
- Smart Summon: Your automobile will navigate more complex environments and parking spaces, maneuvering around objects as crucial to come back find you in a parking lot inside your direct vicinity.
Then, beyond Enhanced Autopilot is Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Capability,” which incorporates the above functions and likewise will start and stop the automobile for traffic lights and stop signs, and allows entry into Tesla’s “FSD Beta,” which comes with Autosteer on city streets.
All of those features still require lively participation from a driver, and are considered “Level 2” autonomous driving systems, where the motive force is primarily chargeable for monitoring the driving environment. Thus, they are usually not “full self-driving” yet, though Tesla has repeatedly claimed that cars with FSD will eventually give you the chance to drive themselves without driver intervention.
Tesla does have a way for owners to “check out” FSD by purchasing an FSD subscription for $199/month (assuming you’ve got HW3.0; otherwise Tesla will charge you $1,000 for hardware you already bought, but you would possibly give you the chance to get that a refund in small claims court). There is no such thing as a similar subscription for Enhanced Autopilot, only the one-time purchase option.
But this trial comes at a somewhat awkward time. Currently, recent Tesla owners are receiving cars without ultrasonic sensors, after Tesla abruptly removed them from recent vehicles in October, saying they were redundant to Tesla’s all-vision sensing system.
Consequently, Autopark, Summon, and Smart Summon are all disabled on these recent vehicles until Tesla upgrades their software to make use of vision sensors as an alternative of the previous ultrasonics. Which means that recent cars won’t get to make use of three out of the five Enhanced Autopilot features during this trial period, unless Tesla pushes a vision update inside the following 30 days.
Electrek’s Take
Since there isn’t any other option to “check out” Enhanced Autopilot for many customers, this looks as if a superb option to show people what the system can – or can’t – do. Many homeowners are interested in whether the extra features can be worthwhile, but not lots of people can toss several thousand dollars at something they don’t know might be price it for them.
This can let those owners have a likelihood to check out the system for a fairly significant time period – not only a pair days, but an entire month.
It doesn’t cost Tesla anything to activate this, and it would drive a number of conversions if owners are completely happy with the system’s capabilities.
Personally, I don’t think EAP is well worth the 1000’s of dollars being charged for it, not less than not for me:
- Navigate on Autopilot is good, however the fundamental profit it has is telling you which of them lanes to be in for highway interchanges, and possibly making those lane changes for you with auto lane change (though you continue to have to verify the changes with the turn signal stalk).
- Autopark works very well, even in weird parking spots, and will be useful for people who find themselves bad at or afraid of parallel parking.
- Summon is mostly a neat gimmick, but might be useful if you’ll want to adjust your automobile in a parking spot and don’t need to rise up and go to the automobile to do it. I’ve used it for this several times, which has been convenient in a pinch, in the suitable circumstances, and does impress people.
- And smart summon… well, I’ve never used it, since it has never worked in a situation where I’ve wanted to make use of it, but all the pieces I’ve heard doesn’t make it sound all that smart (even CEO Elon Musk acknowledges that it hasn’t ever been very smart).
They’re interesting capabilities for a automobile to have, but I’d quite keep the 1000’s of dollars myself. That said, the identical will not be true for each other owner – and now everyone can have a likelihood to seek out out if it seems price it to them or not.
Tell us within the comments below if you happen to’ve gotten this message this morning and where you’re on the earth. We’re curious if it is a worldwide giveaway or only limited to AU/NZ.