As we read techchrunch.com Elon Musk and Sam Altman predict self-driving cars will be on the road in just a few years.
Sam Altman said that self-driving cars are going to get here much faster than people think. He thought we’d see them in three to four years. Musk, who heads electric car company Tesla, put it closer to two to three years.
“There’s a point where it’s not just driving in Palo Alto or Mountain View,” Musk added, obviously alluding to Google’s self-driving car tests on the Silicon Valley peninsula. “But it will be an end to end point anywhere.”
Google has been careful in feeding the press a closer date of release for its version of an autonomous vehicle. Some reports say the project aims to ready by 2020. Musk has previously mentioned his concern over a lack of regulations in the industry and that this lack could delay the release of self-driving cars into the market, marking that release out to 2022 or beyond.
The Tesla CEO is currently testing version 7.0 software that will incorporate autonomous driving technology. They have version 7 of their software, which will be able to steer on highways on autopilot and also steer quite well in traffic. The cars with version 7 software will be able to essentially steer themselves so long as there aren’t any sharp turns, according to Musk.
There was a lot of chatter around self-driving features for the Tesla’s p85 D. Some even believed the D might stand for Driver Assistance. It did offer adaptive cruise control features, but it was not truly driverless.
The Tesla CEO also told the audience there are currently 600 to 700 Tesla owners testing that software on the road right now and that he plans to release version 7 very soon.