Elon Musk thinks Tesla will lead the industry in autonomous vehicles

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was on stage at Nivdia’s 2015 GPU Technology Conference, chatting with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang about autonomous cars and the hurdles standing in the way of self-driving tech. Musk said that a fully autonomous driving system might actually only be as little as a year away, but noted that regulation will lag several years behind tech that actually makes such a system possible. Still, he said that Tesla wants to be the leader in autonomous cars, even though it’s currently seen as an electric vehicle maker. Musk also said we’ll actually start taking self-driven cars “for granted” much faster than many may realize, and noted that one of the key areas of focus for the company is actually on protecting any future self-driving software from malicious attacks. In addition to physical controls for manual override, Musk says there will be additional levels of security on driving systems, so that even if infotainment software is hacked, vehicle drive systems remain unaffected.