Everyone concedes that Musk unquestionably is a visionary who already has revolutionized the automobile industry. He was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for the success of Tesla, which made electric vehicles available to the mass market. Tesla has done more than any other company in the world to address the existential threat of climate change caused by fossil-burning fuels.
Two months ago, Musk held a publicity event for the press and investors to showcase his plans for self-driving robo-taxis, which he said will be available by 2027. Self-driving vehicles will be powered by AI and Musk’s companies have committed to buying billions of dollars of AI computer chips from Nvidia, the American chip company founded by another visionary, Jensen Huang.
A few months back, we wrote of our visit to San Francisco and mentioned that we drove in autonomous electric taxis operated by Waymo, which was founded by Google. Our experience, as has been the case with everyone who has used Waymo, was amazing.
Waymo is now expanding to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta, and Florida and clearly is the industry leader in robo-taxis.
Self-driving electric vehicles represent the future — and it is coming faster than anyone ever expected thanks to Nvidia, whose AI chips will be key to the revolution. Self-driving electric vehicles not only will be good for the planet, but they also will benefit each of us in our everyday lives — they will be safer (all but eliminating the carnage that exists on our highways today), they will reduce our auto insurance and repair costs, and they will allow for greater independence for both the young and old for whom driver’s licenses are iffy propositions.
Although Waymo is doing great things with robo-taxis, a car manufacturer such as Tesla can scale-up production to meet the mass market. We would note here that GM tried the robo-taxi field with its Cruise fleet, but it presently is on hold because of safety issues.
Although Waymo already has a huge lead on Tesla, we have no doubt that once Elon Musk sets his mind to it, Tesla will catch up to — and surpass — Waymo. And, we hope, the sooner the better.