Select a region
Tesla chief Elon Musk has suggested that car owners of the near future will be able to summon their car to them from the other side of the country, as driverless technology takes hold.
The billionaire entrepreneur has just seen his own company confirm the beta version of a new app, called Summon, that enables Tesla owners to ‘call’ their car to them in a single tap. Initially this will work on a short range basis much like a private valet service, but Musk told the BBC that he has high hopes for the future.
“This is the first baby step – ultimately you’ll be able to summon the car from New York if you’re living in LA, and it will drive across the country, charge itself at the various locations and come to you,” he said.
He added that such a possibility could become possible in “a couple of years”, as opposed to being a distant prospect. Indeed, Audi guided its own concept driverless car from San Francisco to Las Vegas for the CES technology show in 2015 – a distance of around 550 miles, so the technology is already capable.
And Musk said he believes that autonomous cars will be the norm in the long term, suggesting that “nobody will buy a car unless it’s autonomous”.
It appears that many big tech companies agree with him – Google are already very publicly working on autonomous technology as well as cars themselves, while Apple’s entry into the market is an “open secret” according to Musk.
Ride-sharing app Uber is said to be researching driverless vehicles too, and plenty of the major car brands, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and KIA have discussed the topic too.
