Driving (or kind-of not driving) a Tesla Model S with Autopilot

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NEW YORK CITY—I recently spent some time driving in New York City traffic, and while normally I would alternate between being extremely bored or extremely stressed out, this time it wasn't so bad. That's because I wasn't doing much driving—the Tesla Model S was.

Today, Tesla is pushing out its "Version 7.0" update to owners of the Model S, which brings several assistive driving features to the vehicle that Tesla calls "Autopilot." Ars recently got to try out the new feature, as Tesla's "computer on wheels" whisked us through busy New York City traffic. Tesla's Autopilot update will handle radar-guided cruise control that will come to a complete stop, line guidance that will steer to keep the car in a lane, turn-signal initiated automated line switching, and automatic parallel parking.

Like any autonomous or semi-autonomous driving feature, Autopilot depends on a suite of sensors imbedded in the car. There's a camera on top of the windshield, forward-looking radar in the grill, GPS sensor, and ultrasonic acoustic location sensors on the front and rear of the car. The ultrasonic sensors lets the car detect what is immediately around it in 360 degrees, while the radar can look further into the distance to see what's in front of the the car.