Tesla Recruits Employees To Test Autopilot Hardware 3.0 On Personal Vehicles

According to an internal email obtained by Electrek, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has put out a call to employees to help test Autopilot Hardware 3.0. Musk is looking for "a few hundred" internal participants to basically serve as beta testers for the hardware/software platform.

Employees who own a Tesla vehicle, are accepted into the test program, and provide critical feedback will have the Full Self-Driving (FSD) package installed into their Model S, Model X or Model 3. That itself is a pretty big "bonus", as Musk says that the FSD package costs $8,000.

"This is on a first to purchase basis and will close as soon as we have enough participants. this is the last time the offer will be made," Musk added in the email.

When it comes the capabilities of Autopilot Hardware 3.0 compared to its predecessor, Musk says the new system can process 2,000 frames per second compared to just 200 for the current-generation system.

Tesla had previously marketed Autopilot Hardware 2.0 as being capable of fully autonomous driving (with future upgrades), but subsequently backed down from the claim. The FSD package was also removed from Tesla's online configurator for its vehicles. However, for customers that did purchase the FSD package, they will receive a free upgrade to the Autopilot Hardware 3.0 computer when it is officially available. They will, however, need to bring their vehicle in for service to have the upgrade performed.

According to previous comments by Musk, availability of Autopilot Hardware 3.0 will come during the first half of 2019.