Even Teslas? Elon Musk predicts human driving may be banned in future

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk says he plans to address “range anxiety” for the entire Model S electric car fleet in a news conference Thursday, but there may be more concern about his predictions for the future of human drivers.

Musk said Tuesday that driving your own car might be illegal in the “distant future” because it’s too dangerous.

“You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine,” Musk said in a videotaped conversation with Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of NVIDIA, at the graphics chip company’s technology conference in San Jose.

Musk later elaborated on his comments on Twitter, saying, “To be clear, Tesla is strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive their cars and always will be. Hopefully that is obvious.”

“However, when self-driving cars become safer than human-driven cars, the public may outlaw the latter,” he tweeted. “Hopefully not.”

Shares of Tesla Motors Inc. were up $1.33, or 0.68%, to $196.17 in midsession trading.

Musk released few details about Thursday’s news conference on Twitter, only saying that the Model S fleet would receive a software update and that battery pack swaps are not part of the latest moves to alleviate customers’ anxiety about getting stuck if they outdrive their electric car’s battery range.

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