Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company’s most important products this year and next will not be cars, but software that will help drive them autonomously and human-like robots.
“It will be a huge shock to me if we don’t make fully autonomous driving safer than human driving this year,” said Musk, who has built his reputation by challenging business skeptics in electric cars and rockets.
He also predicted that fully autonomous driving would become “the most important source of profit for Tesla”.
But such bold promises by the world’s most famous billionaire face major challenges, including technical and regulatory hurdles.
Tesla and other self-driving technology companies have failed for years to achieve their goals of developing driverless software.
Some Tesla drivers are buying $12,000 worth of self-driving software based on expectations that their cars will soon achieve full autonomy.
About 60,000 Tesla drivers are also testing the latest self-driving software, a process of a scale that no other companies in the same field can match.
“(Autonomous driving) is going to be financially viable,” Musk said, noting that automated taxis would boost the car’s utility by 5 times, as owners would be able to send it to run when they don’t need it.
But even if Tesla succeeds in accessing the technology, it will have to come under more stringent regulatory scrutiny before deploying fleets of self-driving taxis to the streets.
US auto safety regulators have already opened an investigation into the safety of the driver assistance system developed by Tesla after accidents in which cars collided with parked emergency services vehicles.
Musk also said that engineers are working on launching a human-like robot called Optimus – one of the science fiction robotic characters coming from outer space in Hollywood films – next year, adding that it can solve the problem of labor shortages around the world.
