Tesla Motors (TSLA) HW2 Autopilot Update Rolls Out For All New Vehicles, ‘But In Non-Actuating Mode’

The timeline isn’t exactly what Elon Musk initially predicted, but the HW2 Autopilot update is finally rolling out for all vehicles of Tesla Motors manufactured since mid-October 2016. Tesla CEO Musk revealed this in a tweet late Sunday night.

However, as the tweet makes clear, the update will not actually be a working one. It could be the end of the week before it actually kicks in. At the moment, even though it will download to the car, it doesn’t have any release notes.

The cars manufactured since mid-October are new-generation vehicles and 1,000 of them received the Autopilot 8.1 update Jan. 1. At the time, Musk had said the entire fleet of HW2 — short for “hardware 2” to refer to the new-generation cars — vehicles will get the update in a week or so. Maybe the company took longer to verify field data than it expected.

This could cause some anxiety for HW1 owners, who were promised the update toward the end of January, provided everything went well with the HW2 update. But seeing the delay in the HW2 update, which may be actuated only by Jan. 20 or later, the HW1 update may stretch into February. In reply to someone on Twitter, Musk remained non-committal.

Earlier, he had said the Autopilot 8.1 update for HW1 will include a Linux kernel update, presumably needed to run the new version.