Recent evidence suggested Tesla Motors was entering the autonomous-car sector, and now Elon Musk, with customary confidence, has confirmed these suspicions. From a Financial Times interview:

“Robot cars that can take over most of the driving from their human handlers will be ready for the road within three years, according to Elon Musk, the US electric cars and space entrepreneur whose bold predictions have come to embody an ambitious new era in tech industry thinking.

Tesla Motors, which startled traditional automotive giants such as General Motors and Renault-Nissan with its electric cars, is now joining the race to build cars that can drive themselves, Mr Musk, the chief executive, said.

The attempt to build a driverless car would see Tesla overtake Google, which three years ago fired the starting gun in this technological race but has since struggled to find a partner to build the cars.

It also marks the latest attempt by Mr Musk to gain a technological jump on the rest of the industry after his company’s luxury sedan, the Model S, became the first profitable electric vehicle this year.

‘We should be able to do 90 per cent of miles driven within three years,’ he said. Mr Musk would not reveal further details of Tesla’s autonomy project, but said it was ‘internal development’ rather than technology being supplied by another company. ‘It’s not speculation,’ he said.”