Tesla creates its own Uber and links its future to fully autonomous driving

Elon Musk It’s clear: the future of electric mobility is autonomous, and those who don’t see it that way should not invest in Tesla. After presenting financial results for the last quarter, the tycoon said that the company’s main focus is on full autonomous driving. And he confirmed that this technology is going to be licensed to another automaker.

Tesla has announced that it plans to accelerate its roadmap for cheaper electric vehicles (which are rumored to not be the Model 2), but Musk has been quite vocal about the company’s plans for artificial intelligence and fully autonomous driving. “If anyone doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve the autonomous driving problem, I don’t think they should be an investor in the company. But we will do it. And we do it,” said the CEO.

According to Elon Musk, Tesla is one step away from licensing it to another famous automaker. While he did not name the interested automaker, he said negotiations are ongoing and an agreement could be announced this year. Despite this, the company explained that any manufacturer that gains access to a fully autonomous driving system will likely need about 3 years before using it on their vehicles.

Tesla’s intention is not just to license Full Self-Driving or FSD software. The company’s goal is also to provide automakers with the cameras and on-board computers needed to keep everything running correctly.

This is not the first time Elon Musk has talked about licensing some of his technologies to other automakers. For example, in 2021 the company opened up the possibility of offering Autopilot to various automakers, but that plan never came to fruition. It will be necessary to see whether the plan will be fulfilled this time with fully autonomous driving. Or if it was just a promise aimed at calm Wall Street after disappointing financial results.

Fully autonomous driving will be the core of Tesla’s ‘Uber’

To confirm its core focus on fully autonomous driving, Tesla also introduced for the first time your transportation service similar to Uber. Elon Musk had been toying with the idea of ​​launching a platform that would allow him to hire branded cars with autonomous technology to get from one place to another without needing anything more than an app.

Now Tesla has shared the first screenshots of what this variant will look like. The manufacturer does not plan to release a separate application, or better yet, integrate this feature with the existing Tesla app.. Once the service becomes available, users will be able to call a Tesla from their mobile phone and configure various settings remotely. For example, climate control temperature, seat heating settings or music volume.

In addition to a first look at the app’s interface, Tesla shared some details about the project and how advances in fully autonomous driving are helping shape it:

“We have invested in the hardware and software ecosystems needed to achieve vehicle autonomy and car sharing services. We believe that scalable and profitable autonomous businesses can be achieved using a vision-only architecture with end-to-end neural networks trained on billions of miles of real-world data. Since the release of version 12 of FSD (Supervised) earlier this year, it has become clear that this architecture, long implemented by Tesla, is the right solution for scalable autonomy. […]

We are currently working on a ride sharing feature that will be available in the future. “We believe Tesla software is best-in-class across all of our products and plan to seamlessly integrate ride sharing into the Tesla app.”

Tesla

Elon Musk said Tesla car owners will be able to rent them to become part of an autonomous fleet that will compete with Uber. Anyway, There are no details yet on when it might arrive.. Aside from advances in fully autonomous driving, it’s clear that a service of this nature will have to be thoroughly tested before it comes to the US.