Written by: Matthew McGuire

On Thursday, August 13 Tesla Motors announced they would be releasing $500 million dollars in stock options for investors. Fortune reported that Tesla Motors has raised over $730 million since the release last week.

The company has increased their amount of vehicles produced from 10,030 in the first quarter of 2015, up to 11,507 in the second quarter. Tesla also continues to build new charging stations worldwide to give customers outlets to keep their cars going for long distance driving trips.

In addition to their financial success, Tesla is taking time to review and analyze self-driving automation with vehicles. The company is getting ready to provide a tailored driving experience with their upcoming autopilot function. Forbes takes a look at the new features.

Autopilot version one hardware: The current autopilot version-one hardware consists of a forward radar, a forward camera, and 360-degree ultrasonics that go out to about 5 meters or roughly 16 feet around the car, according to Musk, speaking At the 2015 Tesla annual shareholder meeting in June.  Musk elaborated on that a bit this month during the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call. “The…highway autopilot essentially is using a combination of the forward camera, forward radar, the sight ultrasonics, and then the GPS navigation system. So it integrates those four systems in order to do auto steer on the highway,” he said.

Summoning: Press the summon button “and your car will come and find you,” Musk told reporters back in March. “Press that button again and it will put the car in your garage,” he added.  Musk also mentioned at the June shareholder meeting that autopilot version one allows “cool features like…being able to summon the car on private property.” Your smartphone (or possibly a wearable like a smart watch) would control the summoning function.

National News