Your days of driving around in a two-ton deathwagon piloted by the error-prone human known as yourself may soon be coming to an end. According to Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk, the future of self-driving cars is a lot closer than some of us may think; in this day and age, he says, the notion of autonomous vehicles is essentially a “solved problem”. In fact, he believes that “in the distant future, they may outlaw driven cars because they’re too dangerous”.

In the wake of this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival, whose theme may as well have been the future of transportation (autonomous cars and alternative fuels and cars that fly, oh my!), Elon Musk was in San Jose, CA to discuss the future of self-driving cars at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference last week. According to Musk, advances in sensor and software technology will eventually make cars’ onboard computers safer and better drivers than humans. “Autonomy is about what level of reliability and safety do you want” he added. A fair point, considering the propensity for human error versus what you can expect from current artificial intelligence.

Tesla is probably the most well-known manufacturer of electric vehicles, and Musk hopes that they will be the leader of the self-driving car industry as well. Tech giants Google and Apple have both hinted at autonomous vehicle projects, and legacy car-makers Audi and BMW have also confirmed projects of their own. While Musk announced Tuesday at the conference that Tesla would be there “in a few years”, it appears what he actually meant was “if you own a Tesla Model S, your car can start driving itself this summer”. Just two days after the keynote where he teased a software update to the Model S to help end “range anxiety” (a situation in which drivers are concerned about whether or not they will make it to a charging station), Musk announced that the update would also allow the cars to start driving themselves – at least some of the time – in a hands-free autopilot mode. In addition to this nifty trick, your Tesla will soon be summonable via your smartphone and able to park itself in your garage – rendering a future “Dude Where’s My Car” situation nearly impossible.

There is still a lot of controversy surrounding the notion of autonomous vehicles. In fact, I was unable to determine if autonomous driving is even legal yet – as with most new technology, there is simply not enough hard data available to properly police its use. However, all signs point to it being a safe and positive advancement in the automobile world. In a recent interview, former General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz stated that he anticipated the crash rate to be about 10 percent of human-caused wrecks. “The autonomous car doesn’t drink, doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t text while driving, doesn’t get road rage,” said Lutz. “Young, autonomous cars don’t want to race other autonomous cars, and they don’t go to sleep.” The biggest complaint heard so far from driverless car testers? That it is “boring”. Considering that the average American loses an estimated 111 hours to traffic each year, I for one will be more than happy for a little extra “boring” time.