Tesla’s Musk expects widespread use in US of cars without human monitors this year

By Steven Scheer

TEL AVIV, May 18 (Reuters) – Tesla chief Elon Musk said on Monday he expects fully self-driving cars without human safety monitors to become more widespread in the United States ‌later this year, after already being introduced in Texas.

Speaking by video link to the Smart Mobility Summit ‌in Tel Aviv, Musk said there were self-driving cars operating in Texas without safety monitors and that would expand nationwide this year.

Tesla, which ​has faced slowing vehicle sales, operates robotaxis in Austin, Dallas and Houston. However, Reuters reporters who tested them said the service was plagued by long wait times and sometimes no availability at all, while drop-off spots on some rides were far away from the rider’s destination.

Last November, Tesla received a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Arizona.

Yet, ‌Musk – who has made bold predictions on ⁠autonomous vehicles for over a decade, many of which have not materialised on his timelines – remains upbeat that cars with no humans will be ubiquitous within a decade.

“Five years ⁠from now and certainly 10 years from now … probably 90% of all distance driven will be driven by the AI in a self-driving car,” he said. “So overwhelmingly, it’ll be quite a niche thing in 10 years to actually be driving ​your own ​car.”

Tesla is recalling 218,868 vehicles in the U.S. due to ​delayed rearview camera images that could increase ‌the risk of a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said this month.

Alphabet owned Waymo last week recalled about 3,800 robotaxis in the United States after identifying a risk that vehicles could enter flooded roads with higher speed limits, raising safety concerns.

Musk also told the summit that his rocket and satellite maker SpaceX was close to developing reusable rocket launch systems, a breakthrough that would cut the cost of space flights.

“We might succeed in doing ‌that this year,” he said. “When that technology is developed, that ​will be a fork in the road to human history, where ​we can become a space-bearing civilization.”

Musk also said ​that later this year, his brain implant company Neuralink will do its first implant with ‌its Blindsight device to help those who were ​born without sight or with ​impaired vision, to see.

“It will give them initially limited vision, but I think over time very precise vision, perhaps super, super human vision,” he said, adding the firm was also working on developing technology ​to enable those paralysed to walk ‌again.

Musk said he believes that in a decade or so, humanoid robots will be “pretty much everywhere” ​and that as robots are productive that will likely boost economic growth with “universal high income.”

(Reporting by ​Steven Scheer; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Susan Fenton)