Picture this. It's the end of the day and you're headed home from work. You enter your car and sit comfortably. It automatically verifies that it's you and starts to take you to your home. You don't even need to tell it where you want to go.

Then, as it starts driving itself, you take a quick nap as you're tired after a long day of work. Or, you take out your tablet and start catching up on that show you had missed the previous day. After some time, the car arrives at your home, without you ever having to do anything.

This is a future that has been promised to us for many, many years now. And although we have made a lot of progress with autonomous cars, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

However, the ever-eccentric Elon Musk has claimed that fully self-driving cars are just around the corner. Will his prediction prove to be over optimistic like most of his other predictions? Or will he be right this time?

Level 5 Autonomy

Elon Musk recorded a video message for the opening of Shanghai's annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference. In it, Musk said that Tesla will be able to present to the world a car with Level 5 autonomy by the end of this year.

Basically, this means that it will be a fully self-driving car and the scenario described above could become a reality (even if partially). If true, this would mean Tesla would be in a league of its own.

Currently, Tesla cars are perhaps the most popular electric car brand with partial self-driving capabilities. In fact, other vehicle manufacturers are working hard to catch up to Tesla after ridiculing it for ages. (That's what happens when you stand against the tide of technology).

Also, Tesla became the most valuable car manufacturer in the world. And from the looks of it, the company is just getting started. If they can really deliver on their promise, the other manufacturers will be left in the dust.

I personally think that 2020 is too optimistic of a target. At the earliest, they might get it done by 2021. The artificial intelligence system that Tesla uses still needs to learn a lot about real world scenarios. And that could take years. But, it's encouraging to see them push their boundaries.