It began with reports on a job ad at Tesla for an ADAS engineer to work on self-driving systems, and now there is a declaration from Elon Musk of a desire for a semi-automated car in three years. Musk says he expect the car to be "90% automated" which I will interpret as meaning it does highway driving. It is not said if this is the same sort of highway driving found in products like Cadillac's "super cruise" or similar offerings from BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and others -- which requires the driver be alert and watching, or a much harder full cruise ability that allows the driver to do other things, like read. I'm pretty sure it's not a car that can run unmanned -- Musk correctly feels that is a whole lot extra.

My reaction to this is mixed, in that there are things that make sense and don't make sense.

On the plus side:

Tesla is a great car company, and as a brand new one, perhaps the one most capable of not thinking like a car company. This is a big advantage. There is already a great culture of car innovation there.

Tesla has a focus on great and novel car experiences, regardless of price, and this fits in well with that. Their customers will not be bothered by the initial high cost of the hardware.

Their cars are already pretty much drive-by-wire and easy to adapt.

If Tesla does decide to work with Google (the articles say they will not) there is already a strong friendship between the two CEOs

Even in the best car, there are certainly lots of roads where you would rather not do the driving.

With inductive charging (or some fancy plugging-in robot) it's possible the car could do some self-parking and more importantly, self-recharging.

On the negative: