Tesla "on track" to demonstrate Full Self-Driving from LA to NY by end of year, says Musk

By Kyle

Posted on May 1, 2017

Speaking at last week’s Ted2017 event in Vancouver, Tesla CEO Elon Musk provided new details on the highly anticipated Full Self-Driving Capability which the company intends to demonstrate by sending a vehicle from California to New York without human intervention.

Musk also touched on the upcoming Tesla Semi, that drives like a sports car, and the underground network of tunnels Musk plans to build through his latest venture, The Boring Company.

Boring https://t.co/TBnhgPYWud

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2017

When asked by TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson about Tesla’s ability to eventually navigate streets without requiring any intervention from the driver, Musk took the opportunity to reinforce Tesla’s continued effort to pursue a “Vision” system supported by cameras and GPS.

“You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras. You could probably do it 10 times better than a human with just cameras.”

Musk boldly proclaimed that in,

“November or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York with no controls touched in the entire journey.”

He further clarified that this would not be a static route programmed in but a dynamic intelligence that would be able to adapt to traffic driven, external events or user-driven changes to the route.

“I’m fairly confident it will be able to do that route even if you change the route dynamically.”

Tesla’s Autopilot solution will likely become the benchmark for safety and performance for self-driving vehicles. Musk stated in the past that the technology for autonomous vehicles must have a factor of 10 or more in safety over a human before it can attain mass acceptance. Tesla is confident that its solution will exceed human capabilities by levels that far exceed anything being discussed by any auto manufacturers today. He specifically shared that,

“The trick is not how you make it work 99.9% of the time. If a car crashes 1 in 1000 times, you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep…but if the car is unlikely to crash in 100 lifetimes or 1000 lifetimes…that’s probably ok.”

Check out Musk’s TED2017 talk below and let us know what your favorite parts were. Fast forward to the 14-minute marker to hear Musk talk about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Capability.