Internal emails have been exposed.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk personally oversaw the 2016 video that exaggerated Autopilot’s self-driving capabilities which is now the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit. The update comes from Bloomberg which claims it’s viewed internal Tesla emails attesting to Musk’s direct involvement in the video’s production. To recap, a Tesla engineer testified in a deposition as part of a wrongful death lawsuit last week that the video in question was staged.
The suit is being brought forth by the family of Walter Huang, the 37-year-old former Apple engineer from California who was killed in a 2018 crash while driving his Model X. After dropping off his two young children at school, Huang’s vehicle collided with a highway barrier while Autopilot was engaged. The state of California is also being sued by his family for wrongful death.
The Tesla engineer, Ashok Elluswamy, is not being charged with a crime and the newly exposed company emails clearly collaborate his statements.
“Just want to be absolutely clear that everyone's top priority is achieving an amazing Autopilot demo drive,” Musk said in an email. “Since this is a demo, it is fine to hardcode some of it, since we will backfill with production code later in an OTA update. I will be telling the world that this is what the car *will* be able to do,” Musk continued, “not that it can do this upon receipt.”
Neither Musk nor Tesla has responded to requests for comment.
Musk was so committed to getting the demo video right that he cleared his entire weekend schedule to work with the Autopilot team. He further demanded that team members write a daily log of what they did to contribute to the video’s success, and vowed to read those logs personally. After a fourth version of the video was shared nine days later, Musk offered feedback stating that the footage “needs to feel like one continuous take.”
Although he wrote in that earlier email the footage would be marked as a demonstration, he later ordered employees to open the video with a black screen with three sentences stating indicating it was the present. In other words, he seems to have intentionally misled viewers into believing Autopilot was immediately capable when, in fact, it wasn't.
The nearly four-minute video was released on Twitter later that day with the following: “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” An engineer then gets in the car (a Model X) and keeps his hands off the wheel as it pulls away from a driveway and begins its “self-driving” journey to Tesla's then-headquarters in Palo Alto.
An into Huang's fatal accident determined it was caused by his being distracted and Autopilot limitations.
Source Credits: Bloomberg
Keyword: Musk Personally Oversaw Tesla's Staged Self-Driving Video