Tesla Self Drives

All new Tesla’s cars will have the needed hardware to completely drive on their own.

16:48 21 October 2016

Electric carmaker Tesla says all cars that it now builds will have hardware needed to drive completely on their own. However, it is expected to be years before the vehicles become fully self-driving.

 

Tesla founder Elon Musk said it made sense to build in the self-driving technology now because trying to retrofit the hardware at a later stage would cost consumers more than buying a new vehicle. He said that the hardware was "basically a super-computer in a car," but it would be up to regulators and the public to decide when driving vehicles could actually be used on the roads. He also said that he hoped that Tesla could one day provide significant amount of data to convince regulators that self-driving technology was safer than having humans behind the wheel.

 

Reacting on the news, Prof David Bailey from Aston Business School, said: "It's a revolutionary technology, so it's inevitable that it will attract a lot of attention.”

 

"If it was positive attention he wouldn't be complaining. But the point is that the press will pick up on things that go wrong, and things will go wrong.

 

"This technology will radically change the way we get around our cities, and as it's introduced it's absolutely right that it be scrutinised both by policy makers and the media."