Elon Musk: Next year will see human drivers dispensed

Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that human drivers will be dispensed with this year, or next year at the latest, stressing that robots will be the alternative.

Musk emphasized that the most important Tesla products this year and next will not be cars, but the software that drives them independently.

"I would be shocked if we don't achieve fully autonomous driving safer than humans this year," Musk said, predicting that fully autonomous driving would become "Tesla's most important source of profitability."

"It's good financially," he said, noting that the robotics will boost the utility of the car fivefold, as owners can send their cars to work when they are not needed.

Musk also said engineers are working on launching a humanoid robot next year, called Optimus, that could address a global labor shortage and, in the short term, might be able to carry things around the factory.

But Carnegie Mellon professor of electrical and computer engineering, Raj Rajkumar, said: "To perform dangerous and repetitive tasks, using a robot is completely the wrong approach."

However, Musk says the robot may be more important than the car. "I think that's probably more important than the car trade over time," he said.

Bold promises by the electric car industry's most famous billionaire are facing major challenges, from technology to regulation, as Tesla and other auto tech companies have failed to meet their goals in self-driving programs for years.

Some Tesla drivers are buying $12,000 worth of self-driving packages with the expectation that full autonomy is about to happen, while 60,000 Tesla drivers are testing the latest autonomous driving software, a measure other autonomous vehicle software companies can only dream of.

Philip Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has been working on the safety of self-driving vehicles, said the big problem is that unusual situations can arise constantly.

"Without a human driver who deals with safety in new situations, it will be difficult," he said, noting that "it is very difficult to ensure safety in a fully automated vehicle."

And Musk had confirmed only a year ago, during a phone call, that he was "very confident that the car will be able to drive itself with superior reliability this year."

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