• Tesla will release a new beta version of its "Full Self-Driving" feature next week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Monday. 
  • At Tesla's "Battery Day" event last month, Musk said that the company had rewritten its Autopilot software and would release a "private beta" soon with "profound" improvements.
  • Despite its name, Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" feature is not fully autonomous. 
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla will release a new beta version of its "Full Self-Driving" driver-assistance package next week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Monday. 

The "limited" version will drop Tuesday, October 20, and will be available to "a small number of people who are expert and careful drivers," Musk said. 

Tesla cars come standard with Autopilot, the company's driver-assistance technology that can steer, accelerate, and brake automatically. The Full Self-Driving package, an $8,000 option, includes features that allow cars to change lanes, recognize stop signs and traffic lights, and park automatically, but the add-on is far from fully autonomous, despite its name. 

At Tesla's "Battery Day" event last month, Musk announced that the company had overhauled the Autopilot code base and hinted that a new and improved beta version would be released shortly. 

"I think we'll hopefully release a private beta of Autopilot — the full self-driving version of Autopilot in, I think, a month or so, and then people will really understand just the magnitude of the change," Musk said. "It's profound."

Although Tesla has steadily added capabilities to the Full Self-Driving package, Musk has repeatedly missed aggressive goals for the introduction of fully autonomous tech, which no carmaker currently offers.

In 2016, the CEO said a Tesla would be able to drive itself across the US by the end of the following year. And in 2019, he said he was "certain" that "the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention — this year."

Tesla did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on Musk's tweet.

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