Skip to main content

Elon Musk is looking into self-driving buses

elon musk tesla
Heisenberg Media/Flickr
Elon Musk may have some pretty astronomical ideas when it comes to space travel (a city on Mars? Why not?) but don’t worry — he’s just as concerned about affairs on Earth. The Tesla CEO is known for his forward-thinking ways and creative solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had, and now, he’s looking to address one of the most salient issues any city dweller must face — traffic. And how does he propose to do it? With self-driving buses, of course.

On Thursday, Musk made an appearance at a transportation conference in Norway, where he said, “We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations. Autonomous vehicles are key … I don’t want to talk too much about it. I have to be careful what I say.”

He seems to be referencing a concept for an entire fleet of autonomous buses, which may be somewhat similar to the self-driving lorries the U.K. is planning on testing toward the latter half of this year. But instead of transporting goods, Musk’s giant, self-driving vehicles will be transporting people.

This is by no means the first time the Tesla CEO has delved into the topic of self-driving technology. Indeed, Musk’s futuristic car company has long been at the forefront of the autonomous movement, with last year’s Model X introduced with a semi-autonomous Autopilot feature. And last month, the Model 3 was made available for pre-order to stunning demand, and this car seems to be the company’s attempt at a full-fledged self-driving vehicle.

Musk has long made clear his disdain for traffic and congestion, particularly in high-density urban environments where rush hour transportation slows to a crawl. “I very much agree with solving the high-density urban transport problem,” Musk said in Norway. “There’s a new type of car or vehicle that would be great for that and that’ll actually take people to their final destination and not just the bus stop.” And while we’ll have to wait to see just what that car or vehicle is, rest assured that when Elon Musk is involved, it’s quite sure to be exciting.

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
This is our first look at next-gen graphics cards, and they’re absolutely massive
A cooler design for a graphics card.

As some of the best graphics cards only get bigger and bigger, manufacturers continuously need to come up with new cooling solutions that can keep the temperatures at bay. To that end, MSI has just unveiled a few of its latest coolers during Computex 2023.

We've got some innovative options here, such as a bimetallic fin array, an integrated All-In-One (AIO) cooler, and a 3D vapor chamber. While these new designs could lower GPU temps by up to 10 degrees Celsius, that kind of cooling power might come at a pretty high price, and that also includes the cost of buying an insanely good power supply.

Read more
Elon Musk throws some light on his very busy schedule
Elon Musk.

If you have a hard enough time holding down one job, then it’s little surprise that Elon Musk’s three high-profile roles cause his days to be “long and complicated.”

Musk, who is currently CEO at Tesla, SpaceX, and until recently at Twitter, offered some insight into his busy schedule during an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit on Tuesday.

Read more
The average life span of your hard drive will shock you
A hard drive (HDD).

If you've ever had a hard disk drive (HDD) fail on you, you're certainly not alone. It turns out that this is actually a lot more common than most people think.

According to research carried out across a sample of over failed 17,000 hard drives, the failure occurred after only two years and 6 months. Does that make the HDD one of the weakest components inside your PC?

Read more