Tesla Motors plans to make its cars capable of fully autonomous driving by the end of next year, setting an aggressive deadline that could put it ahead of other carmakers in the race to put robot cars on the road.

Elon Musk, chief executive, said on Wednesday that his company’s electric cars would be able to drive coast-to-coast in the US — “all the way from home in Los Angeles and dropping you in Times Square by the end of next year and then parking itself, without the need for a single touch”.

The news that the US electric car company is pushing ahead to full self-driving cars comes despite the death of a Tesla owner in a crash in the US earlier this year while his car was under its own control, using what the company calls “Autopilot” mode. Tesla also faces a lawsuit in China over a second death allegedly linked to its current driver-assistance, though it has denied its technology was at fault.

The US fatality had already led Tesla to revamp its self-driving technology, giving more prominence to signals from its vehicles’ on-board radar systems rather than relying so heavily on the front-facing camera. The accident followed the failure of the car’s camera to identify the side of a white truck against a bright sky.

On Wednesday, he criticised journalists for what he claimed was excessive media coverage of the US fatality. “If you effectively dissuade people from buying autonomous vehicles, you’re killing people,” he warned. “Paucity of media coverage of the 1.2m people who die each year in crashes does not reflect well on the media, it really doesn’t.”