According to the CEO, Tesla vehicles will not require a driver starting next year
Fully autonomous capabilities had been promised for 2017
The current state of FSD leaves some doubt about the viability of this promise
In a recent interview, Elon Musk said that fully autonomous Tesla vehicles that will not require drivers are only a year away.
This is not the first time the CEO promised this since back in 2015, he said that his company’s car would be able to operate on their own in two years.
Of course, this didn’t happen and it was only last year that the first Tesla vehicles equipped with the Full Self-Driving software have begun driving on public roads.
This doesn’t mean they are fully autonomous, however, since driver always have to monitor the vehicle and be ready to take control in an emergency.
In addition, the FSD is currently only in an open beta state, similarly to how video game developers let a group of future players use their game before its final release in order to find and rectify the bugs.
Despite the fast progress Tesla experienced last year with its driver assistance systems, the promise to have fully autonomous vehicles that don’t require any driver input in only a year seems very optimistic, considering the current state of FSD.
Tesla will need to move fast with its autonomous systems in order to keep another promise its CEO made recently when he said the company is working on a robotaxi, a model not based on any current Tesla vehicle, which would be introduced in 2024.
This is also not the first time robotaxis have been promised by the company since Musk said back in 2019 that there would be a million robotaxis on the roads by the end of 2020.
Tesla seems to be edging closer to being able to sell a truly autonomous vehicle, but probably not close enough for that to happen in only a year.
