“I don’t want to talk too much about it," billionaire CEO Elon Musk said secretively at a transportation conference in Norway yesterday according to Bloomberg. "I have to be careful what I say.”
The vaguest whisper from Musk — whose ideas for better batteries, electric cars, and space travel, seem at once far-fetched and within reach — has been known to send tech journalists and futurist prophets into a trance. So it comes as little surprise that when the Tesla CEO delivered his Delphic idea for an autonomous mass-transit option, his audience was all ears and imagination.
“We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations,” Musk said, adding that “Autonomous vehicles are key."
As the Verge chimes in, Musk is a longtime enemy of traffic. To Bloomberg TV, he said "Gridlock is just a soul-destroying thing.” It's with such problems in mind that Musk has floated such ideas as his Hyperloop.
Some have speculated that Tesla's newest offering, the Model 3, could be a proving ground for the company's autonomous driving technology. “I very much agree with solving the high-density urban transport problem,” Musk also said, gesturing vaguely to "a new type of car or vehicle that would be great for that and that’ll actually take people to their final destination and not just the bus stop.” That last statement might hint at dynamic routing — or maybe not!
SFist reached out to Muni drivers to ask them what they thought of Musk's idea, but their response was brief. “Information gladly given," they said, "but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation."
