Elon Musk says he'd 'be very surprised' if another company beats Tesla to fully self-driving capability

Mike Blake/Reuters

Elon Musk at a SpaceX competition for Hyperloop pods in August 2017.

• Elon Musk appeared on a Recode podcast with journalist Kara Swisher on Friday.
• The Tesla CEO says he's confident Tesla will be the first to fully self-driving technology - and that it will be the best.
• Musk also talked SpaceX, his attempt to take Tesla private, his Twitter use, and more.

In the race to fully self-driving cars, Elon Musk is confident that Tesla's autonomous features will blow its competition out of the water.

Speaking with Kara Swisher on a Recode podcast, the CEO wrote off other companies' advancements in the space, such as Google's Waymo or GM's Cruise.

"I don't want to sound overconfident," said Musk, "but I would be very surprised if any of the car companies exceeded Tesla in self-driving, in getting to full self-driving."

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Last week, Musk said Tesla stopped would stop selling self-driving hardware on its website because customers were confused, and "didn't understand the different between enhanced Autopilot and full=self-driving." The feature will still be available for those who ask.

And despite competing self-driving tech from Cadillac, Mercedes, GM and other traditional automakers, Musk told Recode they all lack a "generalized" solution - and that it all comes down to software.

"You need a specialized inference engine," Musk said in response to a question about competitors. "The Tesla hardware 3 Autopilot computer, that will start rolling into production early next year, is 10 times better than the next best system out there at the same price, volume and power consumption."

He added: "Unless they're keeping it incredibly secret, which is unlikely, I don't think any of the car companies are likely to be a serious competitor."

You can read the full podcast transcript on Recode here.

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