Tesla Makes a Hard Push to Put Autopilot Cars on the Road

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Tesla Makes a Hard Push to Put Autopilot Cars on the Road

For years, artists, writers, and innovators have speculated about the emergence of autopilot cars. Now, there is a serious competition emerging among companies like Google, Tesla, and rival carmakers to produce the world’s first true autopilot line.

A few months ago, it seemed that Google was pulling ahead in this race (check out this video), but Tesla seems like the more likely company to make this happen. Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, says “I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self-driving. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.”
Based on Tesla’s history and the events of the past week, it seems that we may have autopilot cars sooner than later.

The Tesla Roadster became the world’s first fully electric sports car.

Tesla’s Innovative History
Tesla is a California based company that has been pivotal in the initiative to build and sell electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components. It was a movement that many competitors prematurely doomed and proclaimed to have no future. Early on, Tesla did have struggles succeeding in the cut throat business world, but with the production of vehicles like the Tesla Roadster (the world’s first fully electric sports car) and partnerships with companies like Toyota, Tesla soon emerged as true juggernaut.

On June 29th, 2010, Tesla launched its initial public offering on NASDAQ, becoming the first American car maker to go public since Ford in 1956. Since this time, Tesla has had even further success. In 2013, their Model S won the “Motor Trend Car of the Year” and the “World Green Car of the Year.” Also, the Model S was named as one of the 25 greatest inventions of 2012 by TIME magazine. Its market value is now over 20 billion dollars!

Here is the Tesla Model S. Elon Musk wants to turn this model into the first autopilot car.

Tesla’s Push for Autonomous Cars
In an interview from earlier this week, CEO Elon Musk of electric car company Tesla Motors said that “Tesla Motors is working to produce a car capable of running on “auto-pilot” within three years.” Actually, the blueprint for this vehicle would hand 90% of the responsibility over to the vehicle itself, so it wouldn’t be fully autonomous. But, it would be a huge step in that direction.

Some experts speculate that fully autonomous cars won’t be around for another 10-15 years. Given Tesla’s history and CEO Elon Musk’s determination though, it’d be wiser to bet on sooner than later.

On September 18th, 2013, Tesla CEO tweeted:

“Intense effort under way at Tesla to develop a practical autopilot system for Model S. Engineers interested in working on autonomous driving, pls email autopilot@teslamotors.com. Team will report directly to me.”

It looks like the competition has just been raised to another level.

By: Tim Snyder
Posted on September 23rd, 2013

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