Tesla CEO Elon Musk remained in Norway today where he gave a keynote address at a government sponsored conference on ‘Future transportation solutions’. Musk offered a fast presentation then took a seat for a public talk with Minister of Transport and Communications, Ketil Solvik-Olsen.
His presentation was titled: “How to reduce worldwide warming through renewable renewable energy production and consumption”. He shared his views about the needs to speed up the transition to a post nonrenewable fuel source economy in a similar way as he did during his Paris talk last year.
When talking about trying to avoid overcrowding cities with individual cars, the Minister of Transport asked a concern that got Musk talking.
“Can we expect Tesla to revolutionize mass transit when it comes to buses?”
Musk stated:
“We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus, but would solve the density problem in intercity situations. I think we need to rethink the whole concept of public transport and create something that people are actually gonna like a lot more. I don’t want to talk too much about it.”
He was questioned if he was talking about the Hyperloop and said no.
“I have to be careful with what I say these days. What happen is that I’ll make an off-hand comment with a group like this and then it will be a small thing in a page 3 article in Norwegian newspaper and then international press will seize on that and turn into a big headline.”
He continued to talk about the idea Tesla is working on:
“There’s a new type of car or vehicle that I think would be really great (to solve vehicle density in cities problem) and actually take people to their final destination and not just to the bus stop.”
He then included that self-driving vehicles are crucial to this service.
In 2015, Musk refused to address a question about Uber and a followup stimulated reports that Tesla is dealing with a Uber-like service with self-driving automobiles. Although he doesn’t want big headlines about this new comment, he doesn’t appear to work really hard toward silencing these reports.
Two latest researches checked out the expenses, potential earnings and market share of using totally self-driving automobiles to start a mobility as needed service. In their models, they utilized a hypothetical fleet of fully-autonomous Tesla Model 3’s operating in Austin, TX, and found that it would be extremely lucrative and get considerable market share.
