Elon Musk claimed that Tesla’s unsupervised “Full Self-Driving” will be “widespread in the US by the end of this year” during a virtual appearance at the Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv today. Tesla currently operates fewer than 30 unsupervised robotaxis across three Texas cities.
The claim marks the latest in a decade-long pattern of Musk promising imminent autonomous driving breakthroughs that fail to materialize on schedule.
Another year, another promise
Speaking via video link from Austin at 2:30 a.m. local time, Musk told the audience that Tesla already has “some vehicles operating with no people inside and no safety monitors in three cities in Texas” and that the service will “probably be widespread in the US by the end of this year.”
Based on Musk’s history of self-driving prediction, “probably” is doing the heavy lifting here.
