Though I prefer to enjoy driving cars myself (and not just be a passenger), I'm certainly excited to see autonomous driving come into the market. It's a great piece of technology, and hopefully it'll also get bad drivers off the roads, eh? Tesla's grasp on technology is pretty fantastic given they're a startup who'd mostly spent its time in the red for a while. Yet, I'm not sure if Elon is being realistic at this point.
As you say, fully autonomous driving won't be able to come that soon, maybe in a year or two at the very least. Besides, even if it comes around then, what guarantees does it have that it'll be safe? Great to push the threshold of what we knew was possible, but there's also some moral questions in play. Can Tesla release a fully autonomous system to the public, without using people's lives to unwillingly test this technology? Could they guarantee not putting people's livelihoods in harms way? Best of luck to them, and let's see what Tesla will come up with.
Elon has always been super optimistic and I think that's okay. In fact, that might have been one of the reasons for their fast progress. But yes, technology requires its own time to get assimilated into the human society. For instance, even if the tech is ready, the regulators would have to approve it and that might take even more years. So, I think that fully self-driving cars where humans don't have to do anything at all will take at least 5 years (from a tech and legal perspective)
Agreed, quite true all around. Elon's optimism and determination reminds me Steve Jobs back in the day, rest his soul. They both can be a bit of a pushy arse at times, but their visions have no doubt brought great things. Regulators would have to do their best, and that also includes people's confidence in wanting to use self-driving tech in the first place. I think 5 years is a good time-frame to see this adoption.
Totally agreed! :)