Nvidia (NVDA) just unveiled its Alpamayo autonomous driving technology at CES 2026, and naturally people wanted to know what Tesla Inc. (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk thought about it. His take? Don't hold your breath for competition anytime soon.

The Challenge of Getting Self-Driving Right

After the Alpamayo reveal, a Tesla influencer known as Teslaconomics posted on X that Nvidia's technology looked similar to what Tesla has been doing for years already. The key difference, according to the post, is that Tesla trains its system on "massive real world data from actual customers and a live fleet," with a neural network that "continuously learns to chase that final 99.99999X% of safety."

Musk chimed in to agree. "The actual time from when FSD sort of works to where it is much safer than a human is several years," the CEO explained. That's the critical insight here: getting autonomous driving to function is one thing, but making it reliably safer than human drivers is an entirely different challenge that takes years to solve.

Legacy Automakers Still Playing Catch-Up

Musk also pointed out that traditional car manufacturers are still behind when it comes to implementing cameras and AI computers in their vehicles. Given that lag across the industry, he sees Nvidia's technology as "maybe a competitive pressure on Tesla in 5 or 6 years, but probably longer."

Distribution Problems and Timeline Concerns

Beyond just the technology timeline, Musk identified another hurdle for Nvidia: distribution. He said solving distribution would be "super hard" for the chip giant. Tesla's AI Chief, Ashok Elluswamy, echoed similar concerns.

Even with Nvidia's impressive new Vera Rubin chipsets, Musk suggested it would take "another 9 months" before the technology becomes "operational at scale" with software functioning smoothly. So we're looking at near-term hardware challenges on top of the longer-term competitive timeline.

The exchange highlights something important about the autonomous driving race: it's not just about having cutting-edge chips or clever algorithms. Real-world deployment, massive data collection, continuous learning, and solving the last percentage points of reliability all take time. Tesla has a multi-year head start on that journey, and Musk clearly doesn't see that advantage disappearing quickly.

Price Action: TSLA declined 0.07% to $451.37 during pre-market trading, according to market data.