Musk said in 2015 that he already expected fully autonomous cars, but 2018 was when the flower began to come off the rose in terms of Autopilot and other self-driving systems. There were more reports of stationary objects confusing the system, sending careless drivers in the back of fire trucks or ambulances.
Tesla was still there production hell at the time. Musk claimed to sleep in factories, which his then electronic music star girlfriend Grimes must have loved. But in mid-2018, things were looking up for the launch of the Model 3 – Tesla’s honest stab at an affordable EV.
It was also the year that Tesla overtook Ford and Fiat Chrysler in market cap thanks to Tesla’s rising sales (and the decline of the big ones.) The stock rose toward $400 per share, which was when Elon Musk made his ill-advised tweet about taking the company private and tweeting he had the funds to do so. That tweet prompted a ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission that requires a Tesla company lawyer to review any of Musk’s company-related tweets before posting, a rule he may have broken twice.
On a February 2018 shareholder call, Musk promised a fully autonomous ride across the country within three to six months, a promise Musk originally made in 2016 with Tesla’s self-driving commercial autonomously From Mashable:
“It’s also one of those things that’s kind of exponential, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of progress and all of a sudden ‘wow,'” Musk said. “In terms of time, we could probably do a coast-to-coast trip in 3 months , 6 months abroad”.
But once again, by the end of the year, Musk had changed his tune. In November, he told Recode (now Vox’s Technology page) that fully autonomous cars were just a year away, according to Forbes:
Speaking with Recode Editor-in-Chief Kara Swisher, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said is confident that the automaker will achieve full autonomous driving next year, in 2019, ahead of any other automaker.
“I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I would be very surprised if any of the car companies beat Tesla in self-driving, when it comes to fully self-driving,” Musk confided. “They’re just not good with software. And that’s a software problem.”
It was around the time that people started getting fat with their so-called self-driving cars. people he learned to defeat the security element this would ensure Tesla drivers kept their hands on the wheel, much to NHTSA’s disapproval. Autopilot even drew the ire of Ralph Nader Automobile security center. It probably should have been more robust than hand pressure on the wheel, though Tesla thought, no, shit.
Also happening in 2018: Carl Ghosn, CEO of Nissan was busted by the police in Japan, Waymo launched in Phoenix and began operating very limited robot taxis in the city, and Sergio Marchionne died, leaving then-Fiat-Chrysler without direction. Cars kept dying and trucks kept getting bigger and bigger. On the other hand, Porsche went all in on electric vehicles with the critically acclaimed Taycan.
