Tesla deploys two new lane-departure safety features, FSD price to increase soon

   by Iqtidar Ali | @IqtidarAlii

Last week Tesla started rolling out two new important safety features to the entire fleet — ‘Lane Departure Avoidance’ and ‘Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance’, these features along with other standard Autopilot components give enhanced security to vehicle occupants.

According to Tesla, it is their topmost priority to make the safest cars available, the design and aesthetics are prioritized further down the ladder, this shows in the safety ratings Tesla achieves for each of their vehicles in the lineup.

Tesla made the Autopilot suite of software and safety features ‘standard’ on every new purchase since last month, now the only software Tesla buyers need to separately purchase is the Full Self-Driving (FSD) option.

The Full Self-Driving option can be added to a new purchase of Tesla Model 3, S and X for a $6,000 fee but Tesla plans to increase the price by $1,000 after May 10, Elon Musk hinted the potential price increase about a week before Tesla Autonomy Day.

Tesla announced that the FSD price will be increased after May 1 but later on Elon Musk re-scheduled the price increase to 10th May, according to Elon Musk the price will gradually increase with time, the $1k increase this month is just the start as Tesla is heavily investing in Full Self-Driving hardware, software, and R&D.

Back to the latest Tesla Autopilot safety features, the ‘Lane Departure Avoidance’ and ‘Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance’ features are defined in detail in an earlier Tesla blog post, some of the excerpts are as follows:

Lane Departure Avoidance

Lane Departure Avoidance lets a driver elect to have corrective steering applied in order to keep them in their intended lane. When the feature is in use and a driver is departing a lane without their turn signal on, the car will also check to see whether a driver’s hands are on the wheel. If a driver’s hands are not detected on the wheel, the driver will receive a series of hands-on reminders and alerts, similar to the ones that our cars provide to customers who use Autopilot. If a driver’s hands are repeatedly not detected on the wheel when Traffic Aware Cruise Control is in use, their car will gradually slow down to 15 miles below the speed limit or below the car’s set speed and turn its hazard lights on.

This feature can be turned on or off, and works at speeds between 25 and 90 mph. It is an extension of Lane Departure Warning, which already warns drivers through a steering wheel vibration if they begin to drift out of their lane without their turn signal engaged.

Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance

Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance is designed to steer a Tesla vehicle back into the driving lane if our system detects that it is departing its lane and there could be a collision, or if the car is close to the edge of the road. This feature will automatically be enabled at the beginning of every drive, but can be turned off for a single drive by going to the Autopilot Controls menu.

While the normal Lane Departure Avoidance feature can be permanently turned OFF, the Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance option turns ON each time a new trip starts, the Tesla driver can turn it off only for a single journey.

Video: Latest Tesla News for May so far