John Paul M. Joaquin Auto 04.20.2023 02:Apr AM EDT

Elon Musk Says Tesla Could Launch Full Self-Drive Technology Before 2024

Tesla could soon perfect its self-drive technology - for the nth time.

Company CEO Elon Musk said it is likely to launch its full self-drive technology before 2023 ends, though with some hesitation.

Musk has been repeating similar claims about Tesla's self-drive technology for the past four years, according to Drive.

Tesla Full Self-Drive System Release

Musk mentioned during Tesla's recent quarterly earnings call that he believes that Tesla's cars will soon drive autonomously sometime in 2023, but definitely before 2024.

He stated, despite some hesitation on the matter, that the trend is "very clearly" leaning towards full self-driving, full autonomy and that he believes Tesla will finally crack the code this year.

While Musk has repeated similar claims for the past few years, the release of such a technology would likely generate significant amounts of profit that would be enough to offset some of the margin pressure Tesla is facing due to the price cuts it announced in the past few months, per Reuters.

You may recall that Tesla has been slashing the prices of its more popular models, such as the Model S and the Model X, due to people's "extremely high" desire to own one despite their inability to pay for one before the company started cutting prices. The company started lowering its prices on Jan. 13, per Forbes, with its March price cut being the second time Tesla did so in the US in 2023.

Regardless, Musk's recent claim makes 2023 the fourth year he mentioned that Tesla is almost ready to release its fully self-driving technology to the public. The trend started in 2020 when Musk said that Tesla is close to allegedly achieving level five autonomy, also known as full autonomy at the Society of Automotive Engineers' six levels of driving automation, per Synopsis.

The publication mentioned that a vehicle is fully autonomous means it would perform all driving tasks under all conditions without needing human intervention or interaction.

Public Scrutiny Towards Tesla's Self-Driving Technology

That aside, Musk described the test version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, which the company currently issues to those willing to use it, as a "two steps forward, one step back" between releases. However, Tesla's FSD has gained notoriety and attention from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and other regulators for the accidents involving it.

The NHTSA mentioned in its June 2022 report that it had linked 392 crashes to partial self-driving and driver assistance systems in the ten months between July 1, 2021, and May 15, 2022. Of the 392 crashes linked to partial self-driving and driver assistance systems, 70%, or 392 crashes are attributed to Tesla vehicles using Autopilot or the company's Full Self-Driving feature - the same one Musk says will achieve full autonomy before 2023 ends.

However, NHTSA head Steven Cliff mentioned that the data presented in the report doesn't offer any conclusions, stating that Tesla vehicles may have had the most crashes because they are some of the most common semi-autonomous cars.