Tesla will have fully autonomous cars next year, according to CEO Elon Musk who provided the ambitious timeline while in Brazil on Friday.
Musk is currently in the south American country meeting with president Jair Bolsonaro to discuss using SpaceX technology to help bring internet to schools in rural areas of the country and to help monitor Amazon rainforest deforestation.
While speaking with reporters, Musk said he expects Tesla will have self-driving cars without the need for humans in about a year.
ELON MUSK, IN BRAZIL, SAYS EXPECTS TESLA TO HAVE SELF-DRIVING CARS WITHOUT NEED FOR PEOPLE ABOUT A YEAR FROM NOW
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) May 20, 2022
This is obviously not the first time Musk has provided a timeline for when the automaker will be able to solve the problem of developing a self-driving car.
As far back as December 2015 Musk predicted “complete autonomy” within two years, a timeline which has been readjusted and missed several times since then.
“I think we have all the pieces, and it’s just about refining those pieces, putting them in place, and making sure they work across a huge number of environments—and then we’re done. We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.” (via Fortune)
Tesla has been making progress towards the goal in recent years with their Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta program, which is now running in the United States and Canada and has over 100,000 testers.
In a recent interview at the All In One Summit, Musk called FSD Beta “quite sophisticated” and said the company should be able to expand the program to somewhere around 1 million Tesla owners before the end of the year.
Musk also recently revealed during the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call that they are developing a dedicated robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals which it plans to begin producing in 2024.
