SAN FRANCISCO, USA (AP) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears poised to transform the company’s electric cars into driverless vehicles in a risky bid to realise a bold vision that he has been floating for years.

The technology required to make that quantum leap was scheduled to be shown off to Tesla investors yesterday at the company’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters.

Musk, known for his swagger as well as his smarts, is so certain that Tesla will win the race toward full autonomy that he indicated in an interview earlier this month that his company’s cars should be able to navigate congested highways and city streets without a human behind the wheel by no later than next year.

“I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone,” Musk told Lex Fridman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research scientist specialising in autonomous vehicles.

But experts say they’re sceptical whether Tesla’s technology has advanced anywhere close to the point where its cars will be capable of being driven solely by a robot, without a human in position to take control if something goes awry.

“It’s all hype,” said Steven E Shladover, a retired research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley who has been involved in efforts to create autonomous driving for 45 years. “The technology does not exist to do what he is claiming. He doesn’t have it and neither does anybody else.”

More than 60 companies in the US alone are developing autonomous vehicles. Some are aiming to have their fully autonomous cars begin carrying passengers in small geographic areas as early as this year. Many experts don’t believe they’ll be in widespread use for a decade or more.

Musk’s description of Tesla’s controls as “Full Self-Driving” has alarmed some observers who think it will give owners a false sense of security and create potentially lethal situations in conditions that the autonomous cars can’t handle. They also say they’re waiting for Musk to define self-driving and show just under what conditions and places the vehicles can travel without human intervention.

Some Tesla critics say Musk is making the full self-driving announcement to distract from poor earnings expected tomorrow. Analysts polled by FactSet predict a $305.5 million first quarter net loss, based on disappointing deliveries. Even bullish analysts expect bad news.

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who expects Tesla shares to outperform its peers, wrote in a note Monday that while positive news is expected, he foresees “a train wreck quarter”.

Meanwhile, Musk continues to use both his Twitter account and Tesla’s website to pump up a new computer now in production for full self-driving vehicles. Once the self-driving software is ready, those with new computers will get an update via the Internet, Musk has said. Currently the self-driving computer costs $5,000, but the price rises to $7,000 if it’s installed after delivery.

Tesla vehicles equipped for full autonomy will rely on eight cameras that cover 360 degrees, front-facing radar and short-range ultrasonic sensors. It’s not known how many will have the full self-driving technology. There are about 400,000 Teslas on the road worldwide.

That’s different from the self-driving systems being built by nearly every other company in the industry, including Google spinoff Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise Automation, and Ford-affiliated Argo AI. They all use cameras and radar covering 360 degrees, and also have light beam sensors called Lidar to the mix as a third redundant sensor, as well as detailed three-dimensional mapping.

“Vehicles that don’t have Lidar, that don’t have advanced radar, that haven’t captured a 3-D map are not self-driving vehicles,” Ken Washington, Ford’s chief technical officer, said during a recent interview with Recode. “They are great consumer vehicles with really good driver-assist technology.”