Tesla’s cars are intelligent, innovative, and revolutionary, but does the Tesla Roadster come with an autopilot feature?
While the first-generation Tesla Roadster didn’t have autopilot, the second-generation model does have autopilot. It also features Tesla’s augmented driving mode, which massively assists the driver on the road, allegedly enhancing their abilities.
Read on to learn more about the Tesla Roadster, its history, and how it’s the next generation of electric vehicles.
To Infinity, And Beyond
The Tesla Roadster was one of the most innovative vehicles the world had ever seen when it was launched in 2008. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, had worked tirelessly for years to make his dream a reality, and the Roadster was a partial embodiment of that dream.
His vision is one of a better future, with more economical and environmentally-friendly ways to travel, generate energy, and live. The Tesla Roadster marked the first major innovation for his company, which would kickstart an expansive and impressive series of successes.
It’s a well-known fact that Elon Musk is quite eccentric and spontaneous, quite literally founding serious companies for little more than a joke. However, one of his most bizarre moves came in 2018, when Musk quite literally sent his personal Tesla Roadster into space.
Not entirely satisfied with working solely with electric vehicles, Musk also began investing heavily in SpaceX, a company he’d founded in 2002. Over time, Musk revealed that he wasn’t just looking to better the human existence on Earth, but also create the ability to travel beyond our planet.
In 2018, Musk’s SpaceX was set to launch a rocket known as the Falcon Heavy, complete with a strange payload. The Tesla Roadster that Musk had owned for ten years was permanently attached to the ‘upper stage’ of the rocket.
It was the first production vehicle to travel through space, with the ultimate target of orbiting the sun. Since its launch, the vehicle has been tracked by many through whereisroadster.com.
As this article is being written, the Tesla Roadster is some thirty-six million miles away from Earth, but getting closer every second. Hilariously, the website also confirms that the car has exceeded its thirty-six thousand mile warranty more than forty-thousand times over.
Back To Earth
The first-generation Tesla Roadster was taken out of production in 2012, with Tesla moving their focus to larger, more capable vehicles. It wasn’t until 2017 that Tesla announced a new generation of the Roadster, leagues more impressive than the 2008 vehicle.
Although it was scheduled for a late-2021 launch, the second-generation Tesla Roadster had already been seen out on the streets. It boasted a sleek and mean looking body, with a stature reminiscent of an Italian or German supercar.
While the first-generation Roadster was a two-seater vehicle, the second-generation car will have the capacity for four people. There were bold claims made by Tesla that the new Roadster would be faster than any other production car on the road.
Musk, acting out his trademark eccentricity, claimed that the Roadster would come with a SpaceX package that included ten ‘small rocket thrusters’. He boasted that the vehicle would be able to take flight at the owner’s behest.
Ultimately, the new Roadster is quite simply packed to the rafters with technology and innovation. Tesla confirmed it would come with their patented autopilot technology, as well as an augmented mode that would enhance the ability of the driver.
However, as of early 2021, Tesla was still stressing that the autopilot feature did not make the vehicle completely autonomous. If you’re enabling autopilot, you need to continuously supervise the vehicle – you can’t distract yourself with your phone, or take a nap.
Although that isn’t as boring as it sounds – Tesla’s autopilot is revolutionary and seems like something plucked from the future. If you’re in a parking lot and can’t remember where you left your Tesla, you can quite literally summon it, and it’ll drive to you.
The Tesla Roadster can navigate narrow, complex roads, park itself with no intervention, even going as far as to search for an empty space all by itself. It also adjusts its own lights as needed, brakes automatically in emergency situations, and comes pack with dozens of sensors.
When it launches, the Tesla Roadster is expected to cost as much as two hundred thousand dollars. There have already been record-breaking figures where pre-orders are concerned, with some buyers throwing down as much as fifty thousand dollars in deposits.
For a slice of the future, that doesn’t seem like such a high price to pay.