Tesla Updates Its Model S 60D, Adds New Features, Improvements

Anyone could tell that Tesla's latest and updated Model S sedan looks very much like its older Model S version, but that is until you look closely. The popular Tesla electric car now has some new quirks and features, including eight cameras, an upgraded ultrasonic sensors, and an enhanced radar, all connected to an all-new central computing system that will provide enhanced active safety.

According to Consumer Reports, Tesla claims that those features combined will further improve the car's ability to assess and evaluate its surroundings. In the future, Tesla envisions that with the added technology, the Model S will now be able to drive itself.

But for the meantime, the car is still lacking some basic safety features, like an automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning signal, or even blind-spot monitoring. The reason for this, according to Tesla, is that it still needs to put the cameras and sensors on the road for further tests in order to validate and make sure that they will work reliably fine, but the Carmaker also plans to turn on the features incrementally over time via over-the-air updates.

According to Yahoo!, it was already known that the safety system activation would be delayed whenever people we bought the new Model S 60D in December for $83,670. Tesla wanted to be in a position to be able to test their updated semi-autonomous driving features as soon before they were available, and despite the delays, the features still delivered and are impressively useful and convenient.

Advanced safety features on electric vehicles are becoming increasingly common, and the Tesla setup is right up on top, promising to be one of the leading edges of such technology. Many car experts believe that these potentially collision-avoiding devices should be considered and treated as aids/supports and not an entire replacement for the human driver.

Furthermore, these experts believe that the function of these devices should be communicated that way to customers in order to prevent people from using them for hands-free distracted driving.