--- title: "Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate”" description: "Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged this week that the electric car maker is about to kick its fully autonomous self-driving vehicle ambitions up a notch." date: "2018-12-28" modified: "2018-12-28" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/fully-autonomous-tesla-elon-musk" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Tesla" tags: - "Autonomous vehicles" - "elon musk" - "tesla" - "waymo" --- # Musk: Tesla’s Fully Autonomous Capabilities “About to Accelerate” ![Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged this week that the electric car maker is about to kick its fully autonomous self-driving vehicle ambitions up a notch.]() *\Image: Tesla\* ## "About to Accelerate" Tesla appears ready to kick its vehicles' fully autonomous capabilities up a notch. In an email to employees this week, [obtained by *Inverse*](), CEO Elon Musk pledged that Tesla's fully autonomous driving system was "about to accelerate significantly." Musk [hasn't always delivered]() on his ambitious public promises, but the email signals that he is positioning himself against the autonomous car hype trough — pushing for a future in which self-driving cars are a key aspect of transportation and not a glorified cruise control for luxury models. ## Hype Trough Just a few years ago, a growing number of experimental autonomous cars on public roads gave the impression that the arrival of safe and reliable self-driving vehicles was only a matter of time. But a growing sense of the remaining engineering challenges — not to mention the March 2018 [death of a pedestrian]() run down by a self-driving Uber vehicle — have chipped away at that confidence. The evidence that self-driving vehicle manufacturers aren't always upfront with the public hasn't helped either. An excoriating October [*New Yorker* investigation]() into the early years of the Google self-driving research project that eventually became Waymo found that the company had performed reckless road tests early in its work — and hadn't always reported accidents. ## Road Ahead Musk's promise to accelerate fully autonomous research, along with a call for more internal Tesla testers for the program, run precisely counter to that narrative. That's not surprising: the eccentric Musk is known for [imagining futures that are still years away]() — and using his wealth and influence to attempt to steer history toward or away from them. Maybe the real question is political, rather than technological: Whether the relentless will of one person enough to pull an entire industry onto a different track. **READ MORE:** [Elon Musk Calls for More Testers Ahead of Tesla Full Self-Driving Launch]() \[*Inverse*\] ***More on Tesla: [Elon Musk Pledges Tesla Superchargers For All of Europe Next Year]()*** ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()