When I watch Tesla's demonstrations of their Cybercabs or self-driving cars, I actually get a thrill. In fact, self-driving cars are one of the few reasons I want to get a Tesla, and it's not because I don't like driving.
In fact, I love to drive. It's one of my favorite things to do, and the longer the drive, the better. Road trips stress some people out, but to me, having my hands on the wheel as I traverse the open road, listening to audiobooks and music or just getting lost in my own thoughts, is so relaxing to me that I think I'd have gone nuts long ago if it weren't for these moments of real peace.
But there are times when a self-driving car does start to sound appealing. Oddly enough, shorter trips to various places start to become tedious, and it'd be nice to just hop in my car and tell it to make its way to Torchy's Tacos while I just sit back and relax or do something else. Moreover, I think it'd be great for those who are disabled or getting too far up there in age to have a way to get around safely.
Self-driving cars are, in my honest opinion, a great boon to humanity in many ways and could lead to even greater developments in human transportation that lead to tech that we aren't even thinking of right now. Technology is weird like that. We develop tech we really want, only to find miscellaneous tech that changes humanity along the way. The space program is a really good example of this.
According to Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, once perfected, self-driving vehicles will pretty much unlock mysteries in other automation groups, including robots and aviation. Sawyer Merritt posted the statement he received in his inbox on X.
But more important is the talk about pulling the driver:
Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas in new $TSLA note: "I'm callin' it. Autonomous cars are solved. Do I mean six or seven 9's to the right of the decimal? No. Perfection? Never. But enough to pull the safety driver at scale in major metros."
"From our discussions with @Tesla, it appears the only thing preventing Tesla from pulling the driver is its own abundance of caution. Our understanding is that there is no other explicit regulatory approval required to pull drivers in Texas. A passive optical-only AV system would seriously challenge the conventional thinking of many in the robotaxi community. Tesla truly believes that radar and LIDAR do not make its cars any safer. It is our longstanding opinion that if you solve autonomy for cars – you solve autonomy for many other form factors of AI-enabled robotics (aviation, marine, weapons, etc).
Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas in new $TSLA note: "I'm callin' it. Autonomous cars are solved. Do I mean six or seven 9's to the right of the decimal? No. Perfection? Never. But enough to pull the safety driver at scale in major metros."
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 27, 2025
"From our discussions with @Tesla, it… pic.twitter.com/A5Dme5aiW4
Right now, "pulling the driver" means the individual in these cars who is placed there just in case this experimental technology goes wrong. As far as some experts are concerned, the driver is no longer needed, and the only thing stopping them from being removed is Tesla being overly cautious.
According to tests, Tesla's self-driving cars have demonstrated that they're far safer than human drivers, and ultimately, Tesla wants to pull the wheel and pedals from the Cybercabs completely.
Okay, that's fine. Cybercabs are just cabs, not privately owned vehicles, per se. They're property of Tesla.
But what about privately owned cars?
According to Tesla, they have no desire to pull the wheels from their Model 3, S, X, or Y. This is very good news, but I feel like there's an invisible asterisk with the footnote "for now" next to it.
As many opportunities as it unlocks, self-driving also opens up opportunities for lawmakers, insurance companies, and more to try to eliminate the driver from cars entirely, and I don't just mean Tesla. Once self-driving is perfected in that brand, other brands will follow close behind, and soon Ford, Chevy, GMC, Dodge, Kia, Honda, and all the others will be offering their own self-driving vehicles.
As they become more normalized, I can easily see the question being asked among authoritarians, insurance corporations, and even car manufacturers about whether human drivers are necessary or cost-effective at all.
Authoritarians will want non-self-driving cars because they allow them to get their foot in the door in terms of controlling your car in various ways. If you have a blue state with a radical governor, your emission levels could be monitored, or your electricity allowance could be set. Your information could be collected, and you would effectively live in a surveillance state, as your comings and goings could be handed over to authorities. Your car could be controlled by the state in many ways, including forcing your vehicle to avoid "restricted zones."
For insurance companies, not having to shell out cash for accidents would be a huge money saver, but on top of that, it allows them to sue major corporations if anything goes wrong, giving them the ability to effectively milk corporations for all they're worth and for any reason they can find. Corporations will be forced to foot outrageous insurance bills, driving up costs through the roof for customers.
That's not even mentioning the millions of jobs that would go the way of the Dodo, such as delivery drivers, truckers, and taxi cab drivers. As corporations have to pay fewer and fewer people, they make more and more money.
It sounds dystopian, but I can see a lot of players coming together in order to try to make human driving illegal in many cases. Liabilities, economic pressure, and safety mandates will, ultimately, begin pushing things that way, and I don't see how that conversation isn't already in its whispering stages in various parts of society.
And I see that as a total attack on personal agency, akin to taking away guns and free speech.
I believe that, in a world where automation could become the norm, locomotive autonomy should be a protected right that we add to our Constitution. The call for stripping the human element out of direct vehicle operation, out of "safety," feels like something we should protect ourselves against, and sooner than we think.
I think as AI develops, humanity will be striving to keep a level of independence for itself, and I think driving is going to be one of those key things that we need to at least give ourselves the option of practicing whenever we want. I think that we should start asking questions about this of our representatives right now.
