Elon Musk Says Not Having a Self-Driving Car Will be Like Owning a Horse

Elon Musk, the pioneering CEO of electric car company Tesla Motors, has gone all-in on driverless cars, predicting a future in which driving your own car is archaic. Musk told the Wall Street Journal that, in twenty years’ time, any motorist that does not own a self-driving car will be purely out of sentimentality, equating it to still “owning a horse”.

“They will be a factor of 10 safer than a person [at the wheel] in a six-year time frame,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal, echoing statements he made during a recent Tesla earnings conference call that the future of the company will be exclusively autonomous.

“Well, I’m actually on record saying that I think that all cars will go fully autonomous in the long-term,” Musk said. “I think it will be quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy, let’s say, in 15-20 years. And for Tesla, it will be a lot sooner than that.”

Musk branded any future car without autonomous features as having “negative value,” adding that “in 20 years, if you have a car that isn’t autonomous, it will be like owning a horse. You’re really just owning it for sentimental reasons.”

Tesla has already introduced fledgling autonomy to its Model S electric car with its Autopilot software, which allows drivers to shave and eat while driving.