I’m not sure “autonomous car business” is “decades” away. Waymo has been operating driverless vehicles for almost a decade already. And, I wouldn’t group autonomous driving as gimmick-y. Waymo’s cars are much safer than other crazy human drivers like myself according to their website:I like to drive my car, don’t trust autonomy, don’t trust any car’s summon feature, don’t use auto park- all this autonomous car business is decades away. Wake me up when the car can actually drive itself without my input. Even Tesla FSD is a shamble.
For me , Lucid is 90% there with the software. I don’t need gimmicks.
- An 85% reduction or 6.8 times lower crash rate involving any injury, from minor to severe and fatal cases (0.41 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs 2.78 for the human benchmark)
Despite Elon’s best efforts to polarize the automotive industry, I do have to hand it to him. He is pushing other car manufacturers and non-automotive companies to eventually make car travel safer. Even if he’s a tad reckless about it now.