Elon Musk not confident about getting autonomous vehicle approval. Know why

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not confident enough about getting approval for the fully self-driving vehicle operation this year. The Tesla boss has said during the automaker's earnings call that he is not very confident about getting approval for the fully autonomous driving vehicle in 2022. Interestingly, Tesla has been aggressively working on fully self-driving vehicles with its FSD software update, which takes the technology of the famous Autopilot system one notch up.

Automotive News reports that Musk has stated that even though he expects another important FSD Beta update to be rolled out by the end of this year, there's still a lot of work pending on the system before the EV brand can call it final, which would allow hands-free driving without any human intervention.

Back in 2016, when Tesla introduced the Enhanced Autopilot Hardware 2.0 or HW 2.0, Musk predicted that the moment of human intervention-less fully self-driving technology would arrive within four years. He maintained the same positive, optimistic and confident attitude regarding this technology until today. However, the prediction has been proven wrong. Now, Musk seems to have toned the confidence down a notch as the FSD is unlikely to receive regulatory approval in 2022. Musk admitted for the first time that Tesla FSD is not ready yet to take the place of a human driver.

Speaking about the Tesla FSD software, it comes as a major leap for the automaker and the overall autonomous driving technology. With this technology enabled, Tesla cars can take the occupant from their source locations to destinations without requiring any touch of the steering wheel. However, the regulatory approval is a separate matter, as the government agencies will consider several factors and safety parameters before giving the final nod.

The regulatory body to grant Tesla the right to operate autonomously driving vehicles is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is currently investigating the automaker for several mishaps that allegedly involved Teslas that were driving autonomously using the Autopilot.

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