Elon Musk Prediction
 

At a tech industry conference today, Tesla CEO and furious rumor-tweeter Elon Musk dropped a bombshell opinion on the future of human driving. "It's too dangerous," he said, adding that once autonomous driving becomes commonplace, he thinks the obvious move is to outlaw human driving.

The bold claim came at the NVIDIA GPU conference, an industry event hosted by the computer chip maker that's making concerted moves into supplying components for in-car electronics and advanced driver aid systems. Talking onstage with NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Musk wasn't modest about his views on the future of autonomous driving.

"It's much easier than people think" he said, noting that the most difficult aspect of driving for current autonomous tech is what happens between 15 and 50 mph. "That's where you get a lot of unexpected things," Musk said, including road closures, open manhole covers, pedestrians and the like.

"Once you're above 50 mph, it gets easier," he said. "The set of possibilities are reduced."

Musk thinks self-driving cars are poised to become a ubiquitous fixture in our transportation landscape. "It's like an elevator," he said. "There used to be elevator operators, and we developed some simple circuitry ... The car is going to be just like that."




When will that day come? Musk says a fully autonomous driving system might be as little as one year away. "Autonomy is about what level of reliability and safety you want," he said, noting that once these systems are proven to be safer than human drivers, it will likely take a few years for lawmakers to react. Once that happens, "we'll take autonomous cars for granted in a short period of time," he said. "It's going to be the default thing and it's going to save a lot of lives.

And while he thinks the technical know-how is almost figured out, it's the size of the world's automotive fleet that will make widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles a long-term project. "I think it is important to appreciate the size of the automotive industrial base," he said. "There's 2 billion of them." With annual automotive production worldwide coming in at around 100 million new vehicles, Musk thinks it would take about 20 years to get to a nearly complete autonomous vehicle takeover.

As for Musk himself? It sounds like he still prefers to do some of the driving himself: He told the keynote audience that when driving his Model S P85D, "I always have it in Insane Mode."

UPDATE: Apparently Musk was feeling the heat from the auto enthusiast community—almost immediately after his quotes about self-driving cars were published, he took to Twitter to clarify that Tesla is "strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive their cars and always will be."









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Someone needs to tell Elon that the driving experience is not just about feeling safe, in fact the opposite is equally true.

Plus how else save for some insane medical epidemic can we keep world population in check?
We're already overpopulated in my opinion. We need to be thinking of ways to reduce the population.
Ooooooooo, now I'm hitler right? Well it is a concern.

Technically he is right.

I am on the Innovation Board for an umbrella group heavily involved with all aspects of road way safety in all fifty states at the local, state and federal level: American Traffic Safety Services Association.

There are a number of initiatives aimed at coping with the largest single cause of traffic accidents: Impaired and distracted drivers. We are also looking at ways to solve the traffic situations where I&D drivers have the most difficulty.

In the aviation world, auto pilots are so much better than a human pilot in terms of pure piloting skill in non-emergency situations you really only need the pilot to placate the passengers...and I am a pilot.

For every Sully there is a 100 instances of pilot error being the sole causal factor in the accident.

Amen!!

In the airline world the pilot has to land the airplane in emergencies because the autopilot cannot. 99% of the time, the autopilot clicks itself off, or is to be disengaged by the pilot, at the first sign of trouble. Yes, if all engines are running and there are no serious controllability issues then the autopilot can fly while the two pilots run a dozen abnormal checklists, brief the stews, call Dispatch, deal with ATC (controllers) and make the PA to the passengers. Yes, in that instance the AP is very valuable. In the 737s I fly I routinely hand-fly and am routinely smoother than the autopilot and just as accurate (headings and altitudes) as the autopilot. Yes, Sully showed why airline pilots get paid and the best part was that he didn't act like an arrogant a-hole afterwards.

I would break-down your claim and say that, in Part 121 (airline) flying, for every "Sully" level of aviation disaster there is another Sully, trained and ready to handle something serious. Now, in Cessna 150s, your 1-for-100 claim is likely more accurate.

(I am an airline pilot. 17,000 hours total, military/military instructor and civilian/91/121.)

As for cars, we now have an arena where no one is really trained or tested. You can step off the airplane from anywhere in the world and get a driver's license with little or no effort. I often tell nervous airline passengers that they are much safer above 18,000 feet (above all the Cessnas) than they are in their own car. People in cars don't know what they're doing. Commercial pilots have to know and are tested, line-checked, simulator-checked, written tested until the cows come home. Outside of the U.S. I will admit that the aviation accident rate statistics go up.

Last thought. Raise your hand if you'll board an automated airliner. No pilots, no human in the cockpit. An airline employee (college intern) programs the autopilot and preflights the airplane--and then waves to the passengers and walks off of the airplane and closes the boarding door. Who's up for that? Oh, and no, the suits who run the airline will not pass the savings on to the passengers. Same price, pilot or no pilot. Raise your hand.

No it isn't, I pulled the claim out of my butt.

Look, I held every possible rating as a Navy pilot, you name it, I had it: I was also an NATOPS check pilot, instrument check pilot, maintenance check pilot, etc...I get aviation.

The larger point is that the incredible advances in six axis gyros and accelerometers, navigation allow redundancy that was unimaginable 10 years ago. As well, auto pilots are simply amazing, especially in dealing with routine emergencies. In commercial UAS applications, I never hand fly our UAS. They are autonomous and fly the programmed route exactly, every time. I can also update the route either via mouse control or additional routes.

I am not suggesting replacement of pilots, only that technology had progressed to a point that in 99.9% of flying, they can be.

On one of the UAS I deployed off of Navy ships, the highest use item was wing spars since the UAS hit the same exact point on the wing during the arrested landing while at sea underway.

I'm on your team, I have just dealt with UAS for almost 14 years so I have heard every pilot vs UAS argument over and over.

I'm fully in favor of autonomous vehicles. In fact, I'm counting on them being common place 30 or so years from now, when I'm probably not going to be able to drive safely anymore. One of the hardest things my father had to do was give up his car keys. That loss of freedom almost certainly accelerated his decline in the last years of his life. With autonomous vehicles, I should never have to make that decision.

Most of cars I see lately seem to be driving themselves already. Unfortunately, the are not autonomous.

Not me.

I want someone sitting in front that's just as averse to dying as I am.

OMMV

This is a guy who bought a McLaren F1 at the age of 28, and then wrecked it. You'd think he would know.

That for sure will the first strong market for an auto-automobile. When I am no long able to drive myself it will be great to get in my car and say take me to to doctors office or the store.

I can see it being VERY popular with the average new driver. The get in and can keep texting and update Facebook and drive through big city traffic with no problems.

The big issue will be hackers. Right now we can't keep the hackers out of sensitive computers. What will happen when they hack a few million cars in LA?

Musk is full of dreamy ideas. Not good business sense.

Let's see him put full automated controls, let alone the data processor, in one of his cars and try to sell it.

At a profit.

First cloudy day, sun fart, or flock of geese, and you'll splat your billionaire customer into a fence post.

As far as it being popular with the average $40K office worker? Yeah ok.

I was opposed to self driving cars until every other car was driven by someone more interested in updating their facebook account. If these bozos start using self driving cars, it'll finally be safe for the rest of us to drive like we should. From what I've read about Musk and his love of cars, he probably feels the same way.

Might be time to invest in Nvidia....
I seem to recall hearing about some patents for these chipsets.

I would be happy if I did all my driving in race tracks and on public roads that fall in that 15-50 mph range he says is so hard for machines. I hate interstate driving. I can't see autonomous systems ever being set up on the little back roads where I do enjoy driving, so I'm good with it.

I wouldn't be hard to make machines better at announcements from the crew. "Sssssshhhhhh pppplllll phost wa wa wa thousand feet sssssshhhh wa wa flying squeeee Interstatic Airways pop...."

This, exactly.

Especially in an urban environment. One of the largest contributors to freeway closure/congestion is people driving 55 and then zero repeatedly when the avg speed is 20, and traffic would flow smoothly at 20.

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AeroMobil hopes to launch flying car in 2017 / Wali Zahid

For the brain-dead and appliance-drivers, I think self-piloting cars will be a boon. For those of us who like to DIY, not so much.

I certainly have no issues sharing the road with driverless vehicles--I just wouldn't be too keen on losing my right to drive my own as long as I was able to safely do so.