There’s never a boring moment with Elon Musk.
After going back and forth about the proposed MMA-style fight with Mark Zuckerberg for weeks, Musk is now entertaining Tesla owners and Twitter users with a new idea.
Musk says Tesla owners can use their car to make up to $30,000 a year.
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Obviously, anybody can sign up to become an Uber driver and use their car to make some cash but that’s not what Musk is talking about.
The CEO says Tesla owners can take it one step further thanks to a unique feature that other car brands don’t have.
His idea is to repurpose Tesla vehicles into robotaxis, something you can (theoretically) do thanks to Tesla’s self-driving capabilities.
Tesla first launched its self-driving system, dubbed ‘Autopilot‘, over 10 years ago.
While the early version of Autopilot was basically just a glorified cruise control, the latest upgrade gives it Level 3 and Level 4 self-driving abilities.
And Tesla is working to take it to Level 5.
To clarify, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines six levels of driving automation ranging from Level 0, ie fully manual, to Level 5, which means the car is fully autonomous.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Capability (FSD), which is currently in Beta, is Level 4, meaning the car can complete an entire journey without the driver.
In theory, this means you can rent out your Tesla and the robotaxis should be able to take people from A to B without a driver on board.
Again, the key word is ‘theoretically’.
Automakers have been working on self-driving cars for a while but the technology is still far from perfect and, more importantly, there are regulation and safety issues at hand.
