Tesla announces its new Autopilot system that is fully self-driving

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Tesla vehicles currently in production, including the upcoming Model 3, will include Autopilot hardware that will give the car the ability to drive better than a human, the company announced Wednesday.

This doesn't mean that Tesla vehicles are now completely autonomous. Rather, it means that Tesla is now including the hardware in its cars that will enable them to become fully autonomous.

"The foundation has been laid for fully autonomous, it's twice as safe as a human, maybe better," CEO Elon Musk said.

Musk announced Tesla's Autopilot system in October 2014. It became available to users in October 2015.

"Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead," the company said in a statement.

"To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software. Together, this system provides a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses," the company said.