Musk reveals Tesla's plans to roll out self-driving cars this year

Get ready for the revolution.

That appeared to be the message of Elon Musk during a conference call with investors last night.

He was talking up Tesla’s move to full self-driving cars, which he says will be rolled out this year starting in Austin, Texas.

Tesla cars are already capable of autonomy but so far the system has only been used in tests and at Tesla manufacturing plants, where the cars drive themselves off the production line and park themselves ready for customers to pick them up.

Now, this artificial intelligence is about to be unleashed in a series of trials in major US cities in June.

Musk’s expectation is that it will become the norm across the US by the end of the year. It sounds astonishing, but he says the technology is already largely tried and tested.

He claims 2025 might be the most important year in Tesla’s history, as it moves fast to revolutionise US roads.

Next year will be “epic,” he promised. The two years after that, “ridiculous”.

He acknowledged he might be accused of being the boy that cried wolf on making over-optimistic claims, only to later disappoint investors.

But he told them last night: “I’m telling you there’s a damn wolf, and you can drive it… in fact it can drive you.”

The real game changer might be the way self-driving cars are used.

Presently, the average car is only used for about 10 hours a week he said, but with a self-driving car, which could be rented out to make deliveries, that utility might jump to 55 hours a week.

Tesla’s humanoid robot ‘Optimus’ on display at an exhibition in 2024. / Credit: AP

Then there is the Robot that Tesla is developing, called Optimus. That, Musk claimed, might create $10 trillion worth of revenue once production ramps up.

This year they are hoping to make 10,000 of the humanoids but he conceded they may miss that target.

Musk insisted though that this was just the beginning, with perhaps 100 million Optimuses eventually being built.

He boasts the new robot has the most sophisticated mechanical hand ever produced, capable of both playing a piano or threading a needle.

If he is to be believed, the future appears to be screaming towards all of us, with artificial intelligence powering changes in our lives which, until now, have just appeared in science fiction films.