Oliver Haslam on March 29, 2023, 4:45 pm

Elon Musk Says Tesla’s Next Vehicle Will Be Almost Entirely Autonomous

The story of Tesla, Elon Musk, and self-driving cars is a long one but the company’s CEO now says that its next vehicle will be the big one. The one that can drive itself.

Electrek reports that, during an appearance at a Morgan Stanley conference, Musk said that vehicles that are built on its next platform will operate “almost entirely in autonomous mode.”

It appears to have been suggested that people will rarely need to get involved with what’s going on, much like the robotaxi theme that Tesla and other companies have been trying to make reliably work for years.

That’s something Elecrek picked up on, saying that Tesla’s already selling self-driving technology that it hasn’t yet delivered on.

Musk has been promising that Tesla is going to make all its vehicles built since 2016 “full self-driving” through software updates. The CEO went as far as mentioning “level 5 SEA self-driving.” Some Tesla buyers paid between $5,000 and $15,000, thinking that the automaker would eventually deliver on that promise.

The self-driving software is still in beta and is simply a level 2 driver assist rather than anything actually capable of driving itself around without intervention. It’s certainly not ready for there to be no driver at the wheel.

How that squares away with what Musk has in mind, we’ll see. But as we’ve encountered before, what Musk says and what his companies can deliver don’t always go hand in hand.