Elon Musk Says Tesla Unsupervised Self-Driving Will Expand Nationwide by Year-End

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on Monday that unsupervised, fully self-driving vehicles will become widespread across the United States by the end of this year. Musk made the prediction during a virtual appearance at the Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv.

Speaking via video link, Musk said Tesla currently operates some vehicles with no human occupants or safety monitors in three Texas cities: Austin, Dallas, and Houston. He described the path to achieving autonomous vehicles safer than human drivers as very clear and projected that within five to ten years, approximately 90 percent of all distance driven would be handled by artificial intelligence in self-driving cars, making manual driving a niche activity.

The announcement marks another ambitious timeline from Musk, who has made similar predictions about imminent autonomous driving breakthroughs for over a decade. The current operational reality, however, shows a more limited scale. According to tracking data, Tesla's unsupervised fleet consists of fewer than 30 vehicles across the three Texas cities. The company also operates a larger supervised robotaxi service, primarily in the Bay Area, where a human driver remains behind the...