Elon Musk has revealed that Tesla will not get any approvals for driverless cars in the U.S. (which means that the car wouldn’t need any input from the driver to operate). At the time in 2016 when Tesla had launched the AutoPilot stack, Musk had falsely predicted that permissions would be achieved by 2020 and till today he never had a morbid outlook towards the same.
Now for the last two years, Tesla has been running its full self-driving beta but now Musk admits that it will not be given permission to operate without a driver in 2022. In fact, the software is not ready even now and Musk also says another major beta update will be rolled out before the end of the year.
“The car will be able to take you from your home to your work, your friend’s house, the grocery store without you touching the wheel. It’s a separate matter as to will it have regulatory approval. It won’t have regulatory approval at that time,” he said.
Recently, a Tesla Model 3 was also involved in an accident that had a fatality. The car was reportedly on AutoPilot and rear-ended a bike. Many have been critical of Tesla’s approach to the technology and accused it of false advertising which will certainly make regulatory approval harder. Tesla’s cars also don’t use radars anymore and Musk has been resistant towards adding LiDAR, something every other self-driving tech player has admitted is necessary.