Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday said that there are more immediate concerns to focus on before autonomous driving.
What Happened: The billionaire CEO said that it would take at least a decade before a majority of the cars on the road are self-driving. While concerns around self-driving are legitimate, it can wait for like a decade, Musk said. He was responding to concerns on self-driving raised by the non-profit Texas Public Policy Foundation. The research institute, in a post, noted concerns about autonomous driving enabling movement tracking and limiting the mobility of individuals. It further warned of an incoming “dystopia.”
The Tesla CEO, however, is of the opinion that there are greater and more immediate concerns at hand.
“Of more immediate concern is that it is already possible to severely ostracize someone simply by freezing their credit cards and bank account, as happened, for example, in Canada with the trucker protest,” Musk said. The CEO was referring to the early months of February 2022, when protestors against Canada’s COVID restrictions were faced with strong government retaliation by way of freezing their bank accounts.
Why It Matters: Tesla offers two driving automation systems– autopilot and full self-driving (FSD). However, despite the names, neither of the two enables autonomous driving.
In June 2023, Musk pegged autonomy as the main driver of the brand’s market value.
“The value of the company is primarily on the basis of autonomy,” Musk then said at the VivaTech conference in Paris. “That’s really, I think, the main driver of our value.”
Tesla is currently working on upgrading its FSD technology utilizing software updates.
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