Tesla will dramatically expand its autonomous driving full beta

Your chance now may be to join the beta of Tesla. Elon Musk a revealed that Tesla’s new 8.2 software will “double” the size of the beta test program, and 8.3 will “likely” increase the size of the program by ten. You’ll want to get in touch if you’re interested, Musk said.

The company chief warned that you still have to “be careful” with these new beta versions, but the code “is getting mature.”

Tesla first released the full beta of self-driving in October of last year and has made frequent improvements since. It is already capable of making long journeys without significant intervention. That said, it’s not a fully autonomous system – you still need your hands on the wheel, and it’s primarily intended to reduce the amount of input needed compared to the standard autopilot.

The expansion shows that Tesla is increasingly confident in the capabilities of Full Self-Driving and may accelerate its development as testers reveal more real-world bugs. The company certainly has the motivation to hurry. Drivers are still waiting for an FSD subscription service scheduled for early 2021 (we wouldn’t count on it at this point). This offering cannot be realistically deployed until the feature is considered ready, and further testing could accelerate this launch.