Elon Musk once described Tesla’s lead over the competition in developing self-driving cars during an interview using the tennis analogy of “game, set, match.” My interpretation was that Musk believes Tesla’s development was so far ahead of everyone that no other company could catch up allowing Tesla to win the self-driving vehicle race. According the Tesmanian, during an appearance this week at the 2020 World AI Conference in Shanghai, Musk described how close the company is to achieving level 5 autonomy. He described being “extremely confident” that the company would reach level 5 autonomy soon. He discussed reaching the basic functionality for level 5 this year because no more fundamental challenges exist. Additionally, he believes that current Tesla vehicle hardware is all that’s needed to achieve level 5 along with software improvements.
Charlie Munger once said, “never underestimate the man who overestimates himself.” For me, that describes Elon Musk with a track record to prove it. Often he misses targets from a predicted timing perspective. But frequently, he accomplishes goals that once seemed impossible. Might level 5 autonomy be one of those examples?