The enormous success of the Model S has caused Tesla Motors and its founder Elon Musk to feel confident enough to start working on more ambitious projects. The next frontier Tesla is going to conquer is making autonomous vehicles, and they are promising a production model in just three years.  

Now, Google, with its vast resources and money, has been working on driver-less cars, and although they have made a lot of headway, their cars are not really there yet. Tesla, even though they are a much smaller operation than the big G, is more focused and has a better understanding of the whole thing. Plus, Musk always accomplishes whatever he sets out to do.

That said, Tesla’s autonomous car is not going to be like Google’s. What they have in mind is a sort of auto-pilot mode for cars, in which the driver can hand over 90 percent of the tasks to the computer that runs the car. Fully-autonomous vehicles are also on the agenda, but they’ll take longer to develop.

Tesla, as you may know, has strong relationships with Mercedes-Benz, who already has a state of the art semi-autonomous system in some of its models capable of braking, accelerating, and even steering the car. Tesla can benefit from that technology big time.

Via Autonews