Tesla has 780 million miles of driving data, and adds another million every 10 hours

Tesla's customers are also test drivers amassing an unprecedented dataset that the company hopes to use to design its self-driving cars. And it hopes to do this before other car companies test their own self-driving technology with paying customers. So far, the strategy seems to be working. Sterling Anderson, director of Tesla's Autopilot program, told MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference this week that the company had recorded data from Tesla drivers who covered 780 million miles in the last 18 months. The company's Autopilot program, launched in 2014, is not fully autonomous, but it uses a suite of ultrasonic sensors, radar and cameras to steer, change lanes and avoid collisions, and has been described as the predecessor to the full automation Tesla says it will release in 2018. Tesla's rate of data collection is climbing fast.