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The
electric vehicle maker is in early talks with a major automaker
to license its full self-driving technology, Musk added.
The value of Tesla vehicles would rise in perhaps "the single
biggest step change in history" once regulators approved
self-driving, he said at an earnings briefing. Musk has also
said that Tesla robots, in pilot phase, could become a huge
product. He said they could help out on Tesla's factory floors
as soon as next year, although only about 10 have been built to
date.
Rising interest rates and competition from new EV makers have
forced Tesla to cut vehicle prices to gain market share, hurting
margins.
But Musk said Tesla will keep pushing to expand sales volume at
the cost of profit margins, betting on the long-term value from
FSD. "Autonomy will make all of these numbers look silly," he
said.
Tesla's move to license its technology comes after years of
failed promises by many to create software that lets cars drive
themselves.
The licensing announcement was not surprising, given industry
failures, Ark Invest's Tasha Keeney said on Twitter. "Autonomy
is hard, it requires vast amounts of data, and I believe many
automakers will fail to achieve it on their own."
Tesla has completed over 300 million miles in the beta version
of FSD, over half of which was in the past quarter, according to
an earnings presentation.
But Musk was more cautious than usual.
"People have sort of made fun of me and perhaps quite fairly
have made fun of me, my predictions about achieving full
self-driving have been optimistic in the past," he said.
"I'm the boy who cried FSD, but I think we'll be better than
human by the end of this year," he said. "I've been wrong in the
past, I may be wrong this time."
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Peter
Henderson and Sam Holmes)
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