Tesla expects to have full self-driving cars in which humans won't have to touch the steering wheel around the second quarter of next year.
CEO Elon Musk tells investors that the company's system of high speed computers, software and neural network object detection and depth recognition will allow human drivers to check out. He expects to get regulatory approval for the system toward the end of 2020.
Currently, approval would be required only in California, experts say.
Musk also says Tesla's neural network is learning how to deal with close lane changes on crowded freeways such as those in Los Angeles. Eventually drivers will be able to choose more aggressive behavior that could run a slight risk of a fender-bender, he says.
Musk's comments came Monday during an event that Tesla is hosting in Silicon Valley to show off its plans for fully autonomous vehicles.
Meanwhile, Musk says laser imaging sensors used by nearly all other autonomous vehicle developers are not needed.
The sensors called Lidar send out light beams that detect objects in the dark and other poor conditions. Many experts consider them essential, including those at Google spinoff Waymo and General Motors' Cruise Automation.
"Lidar is a fool's errand," Musk. "They're expensive sensors that are unnecessary. It's like having a whole bunch of appendixes."
He also says Tesla has a huge advantage over autonomous vehicle competitors because it gathers a massive amount of data in the real world. He says this quarter Tesla will have 500,000 vehicles on the road, each equipped with eight cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar gathering data to help build the company's neural network.
The network allows vehicles to recognize images, determine what objects are and figure out how to deal with them.
(Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
