IT News on October 23rd: According to a report by "Business Insider," Elon Musk of Tesla has long believed that autonomous vehicles will replace human drivers and undertake passenger transportation tasks.

During Tesla's earnings conference call on the 21st local time, Musk made an even bolder prediction: as long as there are no regulatory restrictions, Tesla will ultimately dominate the global passenger transportation market. "I believe that in any country where Tesla is allowed to operate freely, Tesla will eventually account for more than half of the local passenger travel mileage. You can test this prediction in the future, and I am very confident about it."

He also believes that the biggest obstacle for Tesla to achieve this goal is foreign governments' restrictions on autonomous driving technology in order to protect their own domestic industries.

Elon Musk's statement is even more bold than his previous predictions regarding autonomous driving. In January of this year, Musk predicted during a financial report conference that in the future, "the vast majority of travel distances" would be covered by autonomous vehicles, with human-driven distances accounting for less than 5%. According to that scenario, competitors such as Waymo, Zoox, Ford, General Motors, and Rivian still had a chance to gain a share of the autonomous driving market.

Not only that, but Tesla has also set a new timeline for the launch of fully autonomous driving (FSD) software for ordinary consumers. According to IT, on that day, Tesla's Vice President Ashok Eluswamy announced that the FSD feature, which does not require driver supervision, is expected to be launched "around the second quarter of next year."