Elon Musk might launch a mission to Mars before he completes work on the most advanced self-driving vehicles here on Earth.
That's the consensus from experts across the technology, safety and automotive realms, who say the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's claims about achieving Level 5 autonomy sometime this year are technologically infeasible and border on the preposterous.
They pushed back against the idea of such a near-term development in blunt terms.
"None of this is on a plane of reality," said Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit automotive safety watchdog. "It's an absurd idea at this point in time with the technology available and infrastructure available and complete unwillingness of Tesla to acknowledge its mistakes."