While Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors Inc., was never known to be shy of making a bold prediction, this time he seemed to stun many.

In his attest of predictions Musk believes that that most cars won’t have drivers in three years and people will arrive on Mars by 2025.

The colonization of the red planet – Mars, culd begin as early as 2024 it Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has its way. The organization predicts and plans to start sending people off-planet by 2024 and create a 26-month cycle that will colonize the Red Planet and form the foundations of a space-faring civilization.

Musk made the above predictions at a Recode’s Code conference.

The billionaire PayPal co-founder said that safety-prone regulators — not technology — are the hold-up in the case of fully autonomous vehicles hitting the roads commercially.

“I consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. There’s really only one area where it’s a little dodgy, and that’s where you’re at 30 to 40 miles per hour” in cities, he said.

“We’re less than two years away from complete autonomy. Regulators however will take at least another year; they’ll want to see billions of miles of data,” he added.

Musk’s, a South Africa-born entrepreneur, views on how malevolent artificial intelligence could doom the human race or space exploration being key to humanity’s evolution were more than uncommon to many and he has come to be known for his unvarnished views on such subjects.

The need for entrepreneurs to start businesses from iron-ore smelters to pizza delivery that can thrive in Mar’s harsh environment and the best form of government (democracy) for a putative Mars colony were debated by Musk, who in his own words, occasionally succumbs to delusion.

Matters that are far closer to home such as the divisive U.S. elections were also touched by him. No one person had the clout to affect the entire country, not even the Commander-in-Chief, Musk said when he was asked about controversial Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“I don’t think this is the finest moment for our democracy. Being U.S. president is being the captain of a large ship with a small rudder. There is a limit to how much good or bad a president can do,” he said.

While mentioning that he expected Apple Inc. to begin producing cars in volume by 2020, business-wise, Musk welcomed competition in what he called an increasingly crowded electric and self-driving arena, including that from Apple Inc. However there has never been any confirmation of a car project by the iPhone maker. On the other hand no direct threat was posed by Google Inc. which has spent years researching and testing autonomous vehicles.

“There’ve been so many announcement s of autonomous EV startups. I’m waiting for my mom to announce one. Google’s done a good job of showing the potential of autonomous transport, but they’re not a car company,” Musk said

(Adapted from Bloomberg)