Tech billionaire Elon Musk made a bold promise to reporters during a joint statement with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday: he is working on a fully automated robot car that won't even have conventional driving controls.
This comes amid a massive drop in Tesla's market cap, widely attributed to declining sales from a backlash over Musk's collaboration with the president to dismantle federal agencies and effect mass layoffs of workers from vital public services. Trump, enraged by this, brought Musk to the event to promote Tesla and demand more people buy their vehicles.
"Mr. President, this is — I have an announcement to make that would be helpful," said Musk. "I want to say, as a function of the great policies of President Trump and his administration and as an act of faith in America, Tesla is going to double vehicle output in the United States within the next two years."
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"That's a big deal. That's great. Thank you," said Trump. "And by the way, he makes one car. This one I don't understand. This one I don't want. But that's okay. Without a steering wheel. It comes out next year, right? Tell me, explain that please."
"Yes," said Musk. "Well, the Cybercab starts production in Texas next year. And it's a self-driving — we have so much confidence in the self-driving nature of it that it will actually not have a steering wheel. It will not have pedals. It'll either self-drive or not drive at all. But it'll self-drive."
"And I'm going to pass on that particular," said Trump, to widespread laughter.
Prior to Trump taking office, the Justice Department was investigating the autopilot feature in existing Tesla models, which has been attributed to pileup accidents and been accused of misleading consumers about the full range of its capabilities to drive unassisted.
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