![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/wp-assets.futurism.com\/2018\/12\/fully-autonomous-tesla-elon-musk-300x158.png\")
<\/div>“About to Accelerate”<\/h2>
Tesla appears ready to kick its vehicles’ fully autonomous capabilities up a notch.<\/p>
In an email to employees this week, obtained by Inverse<\/em><\/a>, CEO Elon Musk pledged that Tesla’s fully autonomous driving system was “about to accelerate significantly.”<\/p> Musk hasn’t always delivered<\/a> on his ambitious public promises, but the email signals that he is positioning himself against the autonomous car hype trough — pushing for a future in which self-driving cars are a key aspect of transportation and not a glorified cruise control for luxury models.<\/p> Just a few years ago, a growing number of experimental autonomous cars on public roads gave the impression that the arrival of safe and reliable self-driving vehicles was only a matter of time.<\/p> But a growing sense of the remaining engineering challenges — not to mention the March 2018 death of a pedestrian<\/a> run down by a self-driving Uber vehicle — have chipped away at that confidence.<\/p> The evidence that self-driving vehicle manufacturers aren’t always upfront with the public hasn’t helped either. An excoriating October New Yorker <\/em>investigation<\/a> into the early years of the Google self-driving research project that eventually became Waymo found that the company had performed reckless road tests early in its work — and hadn’t always reported accidents.<\/p> Musk’s promise to accelerate fully autonomous research, along with a call for more internal Tesla testers for the program, run precisely counter to that narrative. That’s not surprising: the eccentric Musk is known for imagining futures that are still years away<\/a> — and using his wealth and influence to attempt to steer history toward or away from them.<\/p> Maybe the real question is political, rather than technological: Whether the relentless will of one person enough to pull an entire industry onto a different track.<\/p> READ MORE: <\/strong>Elon Musk Calls for More Testers Ahead of Tesla Full Self-Driving Launch<\/a> [Inverse<\/i>]<\/p> More on Tesla: Elon Musk Pledges Tesla Superchargers For All of Europe Next Year<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p> The post Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate”<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p> Excerpt from: \u201cAbout to Accelerate\u201d Tesla appears ready to kick its vehicles\u2019 fully autonomous capabilities up a notch. Continue reading Hype Trough<\/h2>
Road Ahead<\/h2>
Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate”<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"