Tesla company aggressively introduces the autopilot on its electric vehicles, but while the current rules do not allow it to abandon the traditional controls in the form of steering and pedals, and rear-view mirrors will long replace the more profitable in terms of aerodynamics camera. Speaking to members of the US Congress, as explained by the resource Electrek , Ilon Mask made several traditionally bold predictions.
More than half of the new cars produced in the US, in ten years, according to Mask, will be driven exclusively by electric motors. Other authors of such forecasts to reach this milestone are usually assigned 10-15 years more. At the same time, Mask realizes that it will take several more years to achieve 100% electrification, and for years to replace the existing American fleet with electric vehicles. In China, as the head of Tesla expects, such processes will go even faster - provided that the PRC government does not completely curtail its initiatives to encourage migration to electric transport.
There Ilona Mask come with his idea of the timing of the transition to autopilot. In those ten years, as he is convinced, all new cars in the US will acquire automatic control systems, and to give up the steering wheel will take another ten years. In the next few years, Tesla plans to build several other Gigafactory enterprises in the US.
In the emerging industry there are enough opponents to save the steering wheel and pedals. The same Google at one time argued about the danger of a constant switch between a person and the automation, and even patented the interior of the "robotmobile" without the steering wheel and pedals. The human intervention had to be realized through the emergency stop button .