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from the you-weren't-supposed-to-take-us-literally dept.
The claim was made in a lawsuit over Walter Huang's fatal Model X crash in 2018:
Tesla's widely viewed 2016 Autopilot demonstration video showing the system stopping for red lights and moving off again when the light changed to green was faked, according to the director of Autopilot software, Ashok Elluswamy. Elluswamy made the statement under oath during a deposition for a lawsuit brought against Tesla following the fatal crash of Apple engineer Walter Huang in 2018.
The video, posted in October 2016 and still available on Tesla's website, begins with the caption: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." We then see a Tesla Model X leave a garage, and a driver enters the car as The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" begins to play.
[...] At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk publicized the video via his Twitter account, telling the world that "Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking spot." Musk went on to add that "8 cameras, 12 ultrasonars and radar all flush mounted and body color. Beauty remains."
[...] But the Model X in the video was preprogrammed to drive from Menlo Park to Palo Alto, according to Elluswamy, who was a senior software engineer in 2019 before being promoted to head all Autopilot software development in 2019.
"The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system," Elluswamy said in his testimony, according to Reuters. 3D maps were used to pre-program the route, including where to stop, and during the self-parking demo a Tesla crashed into a fence, Elluswamy said.
The fatal crash occurred on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California, in March 2018 when Huang's Model X, operating under Autopilot, swerved into a highway crash attenuator at more than 70 mph. Tesla blamed Huang for the crash, claiming he was not paying attention. But according to the National Transportation Safety Board, Huang had repeatedly complained to friends and family about his car's propensity to swerve at that particular crash barrier in the past. The National Transportation Safety Board had harsh words for Tesla, CalTrans, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, all of which shared blame for the death, it said in 2020.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 21 2023, @08:06PM (1 child)
I took the gp as saying that corporate exaggeration is legion, whether or not done by a marketing department. The C-suite is notorious that way. Corporations are under loads of pressure to deliver, and often resort to outright lies. More often, it is predictions and projections of the near term future that, while not impossible are highly improbable. Remember the term "vaporware"?
One of the hottest of current wants is quantum computing. Pretty regularly hear announcements of breakthroughs there. Another elusive goal is energy from nuclear fusion. Infamous vaporware includes that of the defunct Theranos corporation. Duke Nukem Forever became the meme for vaporware. The delays were so long that when it finally was released, it was very dated, far behind state of the art gaming. As Duke Nukem Forever was only a game, that was merely disappointing, not at all life threatening. Still another case was the fuss over stem cells. History is full of examples of organizational hubris, denial, and crossings of the line into fraud.
Tesla has a lot of red flags. I was interested in a model 3 when they first came out, or perhaps a model y, but the more I read and heard and learned, the less attractive Tesla seemed. I thought maybe, a new automotive manufacturer would finally succeed, and take its place among the giants. It wouldn't be another DeLorean, or Tucker. But now? I am more doubtful.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday January 22 2023, @01:40AM
Exaggeration is one thing. This probably is fraud. Unlike when other companies do it, Tesla had repeatedly done this and failed to follow through on the promises. If they were anywhere near the level they promised, it would be different.