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posted by hubie on Saturday January 21 2023, @12:26AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by ChrisMaple on Sunday January 22 2023, @07:27AM (1 child)

    by ChrisMaple (6964) on Sunday January 22 2023, @07:27AM (#1288030)

    "My car keeps running into things when I let go of the steering wheel."

    Does that suggest a reasonable course of action?

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  • (Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday January 23 2023, @05:39AM

    by aafcac (17646) on Monday January 23 2023, @05:39AM (#1288141)

    Yes, you need your car aligned. It's only supposed to do that if it's a Tesla and there's an emergency vehicle on the shoulder.