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Tesla Promises Fully Autonomous Cars By 2018

Tesla CEO and boy wonder Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will have a fully autonomous car within three years - that's 2018, and I'm keeping track, Mr. Musk. Just saying.

At present Tesla is working on a model that has basic levels of autonomy and Musk said, in an interview with Danish media Borsen, he hopes that the features should come out of beta testing as soon as October.

“The Tesla that is currently in production has the ability to do automatic steering, so autopilot on highways, that’s currently being beta tested and will go into wide release next month,” Musk said.

“We’re probably only a month away from having autonomous driving at least for highways and for relatively simple roads.

“My guess for when we will have full autonomy is about three years. Approximately three years.”

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke expressed his opinion about the future of autonomous cars and the responsibility of human drivers in his 1976 novel Imperial Earth:

As the beautiful old car cruised in almost perfect silence under the guidance of it's automatic controls, Duncan tried to see something of the terrain through which she was passing. The spaceport was 50 km from the city - no one had yet invented a noiseless rocket - and the four-lane highway bore a surprising amount of traffic. Duncan could count at least 20 vehicles of different types and even though they were all moving in the same direction, the spectacle was somewhat alarming.

"I hope all those other cars are on automatic," he said anxiously.

Washington looked a little shocked. "Of course," he said. "It's been a criminal offense for at least a hundred years to drive manually on a public highway. But we still have occasional psychopaths to kill themselves and other people..."
(Read more about Arthur C. Clarke's autonomous cars)

Via Factor-Tech.

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