Tesla Autopilot/Full Self-Driving is an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) developed by Tesla, Inc. that provides partial vehicle automation, corresponding to Level 2 automation as defined by SAE International. All Tesla vehicles produced from April 2019 to January 2026 included Autopilot, which provides autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control. As of September 2026, Autopilot is no longer available, and customers can only subscribe to an optional Level 2 package called "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" (FSD), which adds semi-autonomous navigation on nearly all roads, self-parking, and the ability to summon the car from a parking space. In May 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that recent Tesla Model Ys are the first cars to pass the agency’s new benchmark for advanced driver assistance systems.
Since 2013, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly predicted that the company would achieve fully autonomous driving (SAE Level 5) within one to three years, but , these goals are still to be met. The branding of Full Self-Driving has drawn criticism for potentially misleading consumers. Tesla vehicles currently require continuous driver supervision which does not constitute full self-driving capability. Previously, the Autopilot branding was criticized for similar reasons, despite the fact that no autopilot system in aircraft rendered them fully autonomous.
Tesla states that its driver-assistance features improve safety and reduce accidents caused by driver fatigue or inattention. However, collisions and fatalities involving Autopilot and FSD have attracted scrutiny from media and regulators. Industry experts and safety advocates have raised concerns about the deployment of the software to the general public, calling the practice risky and potentially irresponsible.
History Elon Musk first discussed the Tesla Autopilot system publicly in 2013, noting that "Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars." At the time, no autopilot system in aircraft rendered them fully autonomous. Over the ensuing decade, Autopilot went through a series of hardware and software enhancements, gradually approaching the goal of full autonomy, which, , remains unmet. Autopilot, as initially introduced in 2014, referred to automatic parking and low-speed summoning on private property, using sensor and computing hardware developed by Mobileye. By 2016, the Mobileye-based Autopilot had added automatic emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control (ACC), and lane centering capabilities, but Tesla and Mobileye dissolved their partnership that July.
Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) was announced in late 2016 as an extra-cost option that used a new hardware suite developed by Tesla. The release of the key EAP feature "Navigate on Autopilot", which uses the new hardware suite to guide the vehicle on controlled-access roads, from on-ramp to off-ramp, was delayed until 2018.
When EAP was announced in 2016, Tesla also offered for purchase Full Self-Driving (FSD) as an upgrade option to EAP, which extended machine-guided driving capabilities to local roads. When the "Paint it Black" video demonstrating FSD was released in 2016, actual FSD was acknowledged to be "some way off in the future." The option to purchase the FSD upgrade to EAP was removed from Tesla's website in October 2018; Elon Musk tweeted the upgrade was "causing too much confusion". Technology analyst Rob Enderle called the removal of the upgrade option "incredibly stupid", adding "don't release a system that doesn't work and make it hard to order." During a January 2019 earnings call, Elon Musk reiterated "full self-driving capability is there", referring to "Navigate on Autopilot", an EAP feature limited to controlled-access highways. The EAP option was replaced by FSD in 2019 without offering "Navigate on Autopilot"-like functionality for local roads; autosteer and traffic-aware cruise control were transferred to the basic Autopilot feature set, which was made standard on all new Teslas.
In September 2020, Tesla reintroduced the term Enhanced Autopilot to distinguish the existing subset of features which included high-speed highway travel and low-speed parking and summoning, from FSD, which would add medium-speed city road travel. Tesla released a "beta" version of its FSD software (which extended "Navigate on Autopilot"-like machine-controlled driving and navigation to 'local roads') in the United States in October 2020 to EAP testers. The EAP option tier was made available to all buyers by June 2022 and the FSD beta had expanded to 160,000 testers in the United States and Canada by September. In November 2022, the FSD beta was extended to all owners in North America who had purchased the option. In April 2024, EAP was removed from the North American design pages, although it is still available for purchase in other markets.
Hardware iterations
Hardware 1 and Autopilot (Mobileye) In October 2014, Tesla offered customers the ability to pre-purchase Autopilot that was not designed for self-driving. Initial versions were built in partnership with Mobileye, but Mobileye ended the partnership in July 2016 because Tesla "was pushing the envelope in terms of safety".
Vehicles manufactured after September 2014 included Hardware 1 (HW1), which supported Autopilot. The first Autopilot software release came in October 2015 as part of Tesla software version 7.0. Version 7.1 removed some features to discourage risky driving.
Version 8.0 processed radar signals to create a point cloud similar to lidar to help navigate in low visibility. In November 2016, Autopilot 8.0 was updated to encourage drivers to grip the steering wheel. By November 2016, Autopilot had operated for .
Hardware 2 In October 2016, Autopilot sensors and computing hardware transitioned to Hardware 2 (HW2) for new cars, the upgraded hardware collectively was called Autopilot 2.0 to distinguish it from the original Autopilot/HW1 vehicles. At the time it was launched, Autopilot 2.0 vehicles with HW2 actually had fewer features than HW1 vehicles; for example, HW2 vehicles were unable to be summoned in 2016.
Tesla also used the term Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) to refer to planned capabilities that would be coming to HW2 vehicles - the signature EAP feature announced in December 2016 was "Navigate on Autopilot", which allows machine-controlled driving on controlled-access highways from on-ramp to off-ramp, including the abilities to change lanes without driver input, transition from one freeway to another, and exit. HW2 vehicles were updated in January and February 2017 with software version 8.0, which included Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer (lane-centering) on divided highways and 'local roads' up to speeds of . Version 8.0 also put more emphasis on the radar system, in an attempt to try to avoid problems like the fatal 2016 Autopilot crash in Florida. Software version 8.1 for HW2 arrived in March 2017, providing HW2 cars features on par with HW1 cars, but did not include "Navigate on Autopilot".
In August 2017, Tesla announced Hardware 2.5 (HW2.5), which upgraded the on-board processor and added redundant systems. Software version 9.0 was released in October 2018 in preparation for the release of "Navigate on Autopilot" for HW2/HW2.5 vehicles with EAP, which was implemented later that month. Simultaneously, Tesla removed the option to purchase the "Full Self-Driving" upgrade. In a November 2018 test drive, The Verge reporter Andrew J. Hawkins called the beta of Navigate on Autopilot "the feature that could give Tesla an edge as it grows from niche company to global powerhouse". As initially released, Navigate on Autopilot would suggest lane changes, but could not change lanes until the suggestion had been confirmed by the driver through the turn signal stalk.
Hardware 3 In March 2019, Tesla transitioned to Hardware 3 (HW3) for new cars. Completely automated lane changes without requiring driver confirmation using "Navigate on Autopilot" were added as an option in an April software update, although Consumer Reports called it "far less competent" than a human driver. To comply with the new United Nations Economic Commission for Europe regulation related to automatically commanded steering function, Tesla provided an updated Autopilot in May, limited to Europe. In September, Tesla released software version 10 to Early Access Program testers, citing improvements in driving visualization and automatic lane changes.
In 2021, Tesla began transitioning from using radar to only using Tesla Vision. In October 2022 it provided its reasoning, citing "safety." Vehicles manufactured after 2022 do not include radar or ultrasonic sensors.
In April 2026, Musk stated that, contrary to previous company promises, HW3 cars do not have the capability for unsupervised full self-driving. Musk said Tesla will offer hardware upgrades to HW3 cars to bring them up to HW4, without specifying a timeframe. Tesla executives have previously said that the company would wait until development of FSD stabilized. Musk said HW3 owners would also be offered to trade-up to a newer car at a discount, but didn’t say whether the company would let lifetime FSD owners transfer their access to the new car.
Hardware 4
Samsung makes the processor for Hardware 4 (HW4) on a 7 nm process. The custom System on a chip (SoC) is called "FSD Computer 2". The board has 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, which are two and four times the RAM and storage in HW3 respectively. Musk stated that HW4 computational capabilities are three to eight times more powerful than HW3. A tear down of a HW4 Model S and Model X car in 2023 revealed that they have high definition radar hardware, but the software did not use radar.
Tesla started shipping cars with HW4 in January 2023, starting with the refreshed Model S and Model Y, but without FSD; it took six months before HW4-based cars ran FSD. Despite the increased image sensor resolution with HW4-equipped cars, HW4 initially ran the FSD software by emulating HW3, including downsizing the camera images - a result of Tesla postponing training based on the new HW4 cameras. By FSD v13 in late 2024, Tesla was using full-resolution AI4 inputs and native AI4 neural-network architectures.
Hardware 4 plus (AI4.1 or AI4+) At the Tesla Q1 earnings call on April 22, 2026, Elon Musk announced that HW4 will be receiving an upgrade named AI4.1, with newer-generation memory chips, the memory size going from 16GB to 32GB per chip (64GB total for the two chips in the configuration), and a 10% increase in computing power and memory bandwidth. HW4 plus (AI4.1 or AI4+) was scheduled to begin production in 2027.
In July 2026, increased memory in the Tesla Cybercab FSD hardware configuration was reported. In September 2026, the Cybercab was reported to have "similar autopilot computer to HW4 with some iterative updates".
Hardware 5 (AI5) Musk announced Hardware 5 (HW5), renamed AI5, during the Tesla annual meeting in June 2024. He said it was scheduled for release in January 2026, but in that month the schedule was revised to early 2027. He said it would be ten times more powerful than HW4 and use up to 800 watts when processing complex environments, versus a maximum of 300 watts for HW3 and HW4.
In January 2026, Musk said "AI4 by itself will achieve self-driving safety levels very far above human. AI5 will make the cars almost perfect and greatly enhance Optimus [robots]", but in April 2026, he said that AI5 will not be used for cars and will be used for "Optimus and [Tesla's] supercomputer clusters. AI4 is enough to achieve much better than human safety for FSD."
Autopilot packages
Autopilot