Tesla close to developing fully autonomous car

SHANGHAI: Tesla founder Elon Musk said Thursday that the world's recently crowned most valuable auto company could achieve a fully autonomous car by the end of 2020.

Musk, who has made premature predictions about the advent of completely autonomous cars before, offered the updated timetable in a pre-recorded message to a Shanghai tech fair.

"I'm extremely confident that 'Level 5', or essentially complete autonomy, will happen, and I think will happen very quickly," Musk said.

"I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality... complete this year." In years past, Musk had said Tesla may develop the technology for a completely autonomous vehicle by 2018, and then last year he said it may come by early 2020.