A video from 2016 that Tesla used to promote its self-driving technology was assembled to showcase capabilities the system did not have, such as stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light, according to testimony from a senior engineer.
The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was posted in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by CEO Elon Musk as proof that Tesla drives itself.
But the Model X didn’t drive itself with the technology Tesla had installed, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of autopilot software, said in the transcript of a July deposition taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla over a fatal crash at 2018 involving a former Apple engineer.
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Elluswamy’s previously unreported testimony represents the first time a Tesla employee has confirmed and detailed how the video was produced.
The video carries a tagline that reads: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car drives itself.”
Elluswamy said Tesla’s Autopilot team set out to design and record a “demonstration of system capabilities” at Musk’s request.
Elluswamy, Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. However, the company has warned drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles while using autopilot.
Tesla’s technology is designed to help with steering, braking, speed and lane changes, but its features “they do not make the vehicle autonomous”says the company on its website.
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To create the video, Tesla used 3D mapping of a predetermined route from a home in Menlo Park, California, to Tesla’s Palo Alto headquarters at the time, he said.
Drivers stepped in to take control on test drives, he said. While trying to prove that the Model X could park itself without a driver, a test car crashed into a Tesla parking fence.
“The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available to customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system,” Elluswamy said, according to a transcript of his testimony seen by Reuters.
When Tesla posted the video, Musk tweeted: “Tesla drives itself (with absolutely no human intervention) from urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking space.”
Tesla is facing lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its driver assistance systems.
The US Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Tesla’s claims that its electric vehicles can drive themselves by 2021, after a series of accidents, some of them fatal, involving Autopilot, Reuters reported. .
Source: Reuters
Source: Gestion
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