Elon Musk announced in Tesla's last shareholders call that they would be doing a beta with a limited number of customers starting August 15th, and then doing a general release of the software in a couple of months.
Here's the audio from the call
For anyone who doesn't know, autopilot is a limited form of self-driving that allows a Tesla Model S to drive itself on the freeways. It's basically a combination of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping. Tesla says there is still an expectation that the driver is paying attention to what the car is doing, but they also imply that the car can drive itself from on-ramp to off-ramp.
Tesla Model S cars made after September 2014 shipped with the sensors for autopilot, but it has to be enabled with a software update.
The reason this is cool is because it will mark the first time that a consumer vehicle will have the ability to drive itself (albeit only on the highway).
It appears Tesla is really serious about making self-driving cars. I vividly remember Elon Musk telling Rachcrane during an Interview with CNN Money that a Tesla car would be 90 percent capable of autopilot in 2015. Musk said they would achieve that combining by combining cameras with image recognition with radar and long-range ultrasonics.
Musk is optimistic that Tesla would be a leader in this field and if they don't, shame on 'us!.' In other words, Tesla would lead and other autonomous vehicle companies developing self-driving technology like Google, who has done extensive research on automated driving,will follow from behind. Can you imagine that.
Uber said recently that it would buy all 500,000 cars Tesla plans to build in five years time if they become self-driving. In as much as we know that that is not going to happen, considering the fact that Uber itself is also planning to produce its own self-driving cars and could keep all the profits it makes from its SD ride sharing service, is a good thing we are witnessing the birth of some new major automakers.