Robots taking to street

TESLA chief executive Elon Musk expects to start converting the company’s electric cars into fully self-driving vehicles next year as part of an audacious plan to create a network of robotic taxis to compete with Uber and other ride-hailing services.

The vision sketched out yesterday during an event at Tesla’s Silicon Valley HQ requires several leaps of faith – something the zealous investors and consumers who view Mr Musk as a technological genius often are willing to take.

But self-driving car experts fear Mr Musk is shirking public safety in an effort to boost Tesla’s stock and sell more of the company’s electric cars. This is amid lingering questions about whether the 15year-old automaker can consistently make money.

To prove his sceptics wrong, Mr Musk will have to persuade regulators that Tesla’s technology for transforming potentially hundreds of thousands of electric cars into self-driving vehicles will produce robots that are safer and more reliable than humans.

And to do that, he will have to be correct in his bet that Tesla has come up with a better way to produce selfdriving cars than any other company working towards it.

Musk’s quasi-sales pitch came two days before Tesla is expected to report a disappointing performance for the first three months of the year.