Electric car developer Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) expects to “blow people’s minds” with its self-driving car technology, although its results failed to achieve quite the same effect.
Tesla’s boss Elon Musk said the progress the company was making in fully autonomous driving “would come sooner than people think”.
“What we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind,” various news outlets quoted Musk as saying.
Tesla is working on the so-called “level 4” next generation autonomous driving technology and expects it to be ready towards the end of next year.
The company finished designing its Model 3 sedan in the second quarter and intends to start production before the end of the year.
But it is unclear whether the car will be autonomous as regulators have still to approve the technology for public use.
Tesla is installing the self-driving hardware in its cars and expects to be able to upgrade it through wireless software updates.
Tesla is hoping the Model 3 will widen its market appeal with a more affordable car. Its starting price is expected to be about US$35,000.
In second quarter numbers, Tesla posted a loss of US$293mln, worse-than-expected sales of US$1.3bn and lower-than-anticipated production of 14,402 cars.
But the company said it was on track to hit second-half production targets.
Some analysts said the market was more concerned about the company’s operational progress than short-term earnings.
“We got the quarter out of the way so now we’ve got a couple of months where Elon can start telling us more about the Model 3,” CNBC quoted Robert W. Baird research analyst Ben Kallo as saying on its website.