WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
- Many analysts used to believe that driverless cars were a decade away, but company after company, including Tesla, wants to prove them wrong
The majority of people, well, when I say the majority of people what I actually mean, looking at the surveys, is at least 40 percent of people, are looking forwards to the day when they can get in a car, crack open a soda and kick back watching a movie.
I am, of course, talking about the arrival of self-driving cars, and now, if Elon Musk the billionaire polymath has anything to say about it, which he does, it’s won’t be too long now until that soda filled dream becomes a reality.
In a tweeted reply to a question about when Tesla’s Autopilot system would transition into a fully self-driving system Musk replied “in three to six months.”
@tsrandall 3 months maybe, 6 months definitely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 24, 2017
That said though while it might be ready to be debuted within the next six months that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be available right away because while consumers might be ready to go for a ride regulators are still wary of unleashing millions of self-driving cars onto the world’s roads, particularly in light of some of the recent fatal crashes and near misses that have happened recently.
But, as the technology improves, and as regulators and state legislators, like those in Michigan who recently green lighted self-driving vehicles on all public roads, warm to the technology it’ll only be a matter of time before we see hordes of soda loving, Dorito munching movie goers laughing it up to Star Wars on their way to work each morning.
[…] have fully tested and approved their autonomous software, which looks set to happen within the next three months, the cars will have their firmware updated to enable full […]