Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO known for his out-of-the-box ideas, has announced a vision for the future that spells the death of driving as we know it.
On the company’s third-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Musk said the current business model of human-driven cars is coming to an end and will be replaced by self-driving electric vehicles with next-generation technology, no steering wheel and no brake pedals.
“We’ve made it very clear that the future is autonomous electric vehicles,” Musk said.
He went on to compare piloted vehicles to horses as a means of transportation, saying the trend toward autonomous vehicles will appear obvious in retrospect.
“Non-autonomous gas cars in the future will be like riding a horse and using a flip phone. It’s not that there aren’t any horses,” he said. “There are some horses, but they’re unusual. They are niche.”
Musk’s comments come after Tesla earlier this month announced its autonomous robot taxi, the Cybercab, along with a self-driving Robovan for larger groups. Some analysts criticized the supposedly autonomous vehicles for driving on a controlled, closed track during their unveiling. But Musk said Wednesday that the robot axis was already being tested by employees on the streets of San Francisco.
Musk added on the call that he believes car companies that don’t focus on autonomous vehicles will pay the price in the future.
“A lot of car companies or most car companies haven’t internalized this, which is surprising because we’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for so long and it’s going to hurt them in the future,” he said.
Musk promised that all of Tesla’s vehicles will be autonomous in the future. Of the 7 million Tesla vehicles on the road, he said “the vast majority” are capable of being autonomous. Musk has previously said that with an upgrade to Tesla’s FSD (Full Self-Driving) software, customers can “soon” look forward to a full year of driving without ever touching the wheel.
He also took a shot at Waymo, which analysts have pointed to as an example of self-driving technology already on the roads following Tesla’s robot taxi announcement.
“We’re currently making on the order of 35,000 autonomous vehicles per week. Compare that to, say, Waymo’s entire fleet is less than…[they] has less than 1,000 cars,” Musk said.
During the call, analysts also asked about the long-promised $25,000 EV that Tesla reportedly scrapped earlier this year. While Tesla said in its earnings report that “more affordable models” will be launched in the first half of next year, Musk made it clear that a low-cost electric car without autonomous capabilities would be a step backwards.
“I think it’s pointless to have a regular $25,000 model,” he said. “That would be stupid. Like, it would be completely contrary to what we believe.”
Data sheet: Stay ahead of the tech industry with thoughtful analysis of the industry’s biggest names.
Register here.