Tesla has a huge incentive to deploy self-driving tech. But is the world ready?

Along with sustainable electric transportation, he views autonomy as a core element of Tesla Inc.'s "fundamental goodness." Humans will be freed of the tedium of driving, he told Wall Street last year. Millions of lives will be saved. There is another incentive for Musk to put driverless cars on the road, though. The day he does that, hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stored-up revenue become eligible for a trip straight to Tesla's perpetually stressed bottom line.