Elon Musk Announces Free Trial for Tesla's Autopilot

Elon Musk, who is still Tesla’s CEO, announced during this week's annual shareholders meeting in the company that it is launching a free trial program for Tesla's autopilot technology.

Tesla is known as a pioneer in making cars that can drive themselves. However, the truth is the autopilot technology works like an add-on feature for all their luxury electric cars.

Probably to convince all Tesla car owners to avail of the autopilot feature and increase confidence in the said technology, Musk announced the launch of the free trial program “within the next couple months,” according to The Verge.

However, that is all the information confirmed at the moment. Tesla is yet to reveal how long the free trial will last for every Tesla car owner and what requirements that will entail. But the good news still stands: Drivers with non-autopilot Tesla vehicles will soon get the chance to sample the advanced vehicle tech without paying for it.

Apart from announcing the free trial, Musk also confirmed that several improvements will be released on Tesla vehicle systems with Autopilot within June as part of a series of major patches to roll out in the next few months. It is likely that these updates will be released over-the-air — a method that was recently praised by Consumer Reports while reviewing an updated Model 3.

Musk said (via the same The Verge report), “The reliability and capability of Autopilot will increase exponentially over the next six to twelve months. The improvements are very rapid.”

Right now, Tesla car owners can already add the Autopilot mechanism to their vehicles with costs ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

Meanwhile, there was also a lot of attention drawn by the latest Tesla shareholders meeting. Prior to the affair, there were rumblings that some shareholders might seek a major company reorganization that could have removed Musk from the CEO position.

On the day of the meeting, CNBC reported that California-based Jiang Zhao, with 12 shares, presented one of the proposals that would have shaken up Tesla’s organizational chart. Zhao reportedly suggested for Tesla to have an independent chairman. However, Zhao’s proposal, along with another that would have placed three board member positions up for re-election, were both rejected, according to Seeking Alpha.