[helicon]

Yesterday Elon Musk tweeted this[1]:

"Tomorrow is Part 1 of the Model 3 unveil. Part 2, which takes things to another level, will be closer to production. "

And back in January he tweeted this[2]:

"In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY"

Do you think he is saying the Model 3 will be fully autonomous?

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/715307847890903041

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920

[scoot]

It sounds like it, but that would be on hell of a battery range if that's true.

[spurgu]

It will probably be able to drive itself to a charging station. :)

[illumin8]

They've written about this on their blog:

https://www.teslamotors.com/node/14147?no_cache=1459519432

The eventual goal is to have the car be able to open your garage door, exit, close your garage door, then drive to your location, stopping to charge itself at supercharger stations along the way.

The NYC to LA tweet implies the car would need fully autonomous driving capabilities to do so.

[Symmetry]

I wouldn't expect the autonomy package to have a huge impact on range. It takes a lot of energy to figure out where you are and navigate when you're looking at it from the context of a quad copter or what you can carry in your pocket but it's probably going to be pretty small compared to a Tesla's beastly 60+kWh battery. Even on the rolling cabinet I worked on[1] the motors took more power than the autonomy kit did.

[1]http://www.vecna.com/product/qc-bot-standard-cabinet/

[helicon]

I don't mean the range so much as it sounds like he could be hinting that the car will be capable of being fully autonomous. Considering the price point for the entry level version is ~35k, could we be about to see the first mass market self driving car?

[randomname2]

Maybe it could charge itself at charging stations?

[grecy]

I think it's very clear the Model 3 will be fully autonomous.

It has no cluster - no gauges of any kind in front of the driver, and only a tiny speed readout on the big screen in the center of the dash. In the Verge video a Tesla designer says that's production ready (not just alpha).

I won't be shocked if it doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals, or at least downplays them a lot.