According to testimony from a senior engineer, a 2016 video used by Tesla to promote its self-driving technology was designed to demonstrate capabilities such as stopping at red lights and turning green lights. But the acceleration that the system did not have.
The video, which is stored on Tesla’s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted by Chief Executive Elon Musk on Twitter as proof that “Tesla drives itself.”
But the Model X wasn’t driving itself with the technology Tesla deployed, Ashok Elswami, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, said in a transcript of a July deposition filed as evidence in a 2018 fatal crash lawsuit against Tesla. A former Apple engineer was involved.
The previously unreported testimony by Alluswamy represents the first time a Tesla employee has confirmed and detailed how the video was produced.
The video has a tagline that reads: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He’s not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
Tesla’s Autopilot team came out at Musk’s request to engineer and record a “demonstration of the system’s capabilities,” Alluswamy said.
Eluswami, Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. However, the company cautions drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles using Autopilot.
The Tesla technology is designed to assist with steering, braking, acceleration and lane changes, but its features “do not make the vehicle autonomous,” the company says on its website.
To create the video, Tesla used 3D mapping on a predetermined route from a home in Menlo Park, Calif., to Tesla’s then-headquarters in Palo Alto, he said.
He said the drivers intervened to control the test runs. When trying to demonstrate that the Model X could park itself without a driver, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla’s parking lot, he said.
“The purpose of the video was not to accurately represent what was available to users in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build in the system,” Eluswami said, referring to his testimony seen by JEE News. According to a transcript.
When Tesla released the video, Musk tweeted, “Tesla drives itself (no human input) from urban street to highway to street, then finds a parking space.”
Tesla is facing lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its driver assistance system.
The US Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Tesla’s claims that its electric vehicles could drive themselves in 2021, after a number of accidents, some fatal, involving Autopilot.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that Tesla engineers shot a 2016 video to promote Autopilot, without revealing whether the route was pre-mapped or a car crash trying to complete the shoot. was a victim of
Asked if the 2016 video showed the performance of the Tesla Autopilot system currently available in the production car, Eluswami said, “It doesn’t.”
Eluswami was deposed in a lawsuit against Tesla over a 2018 crash in Mountain View, California, that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang.
Andrew McDevitt, a lawyer who represents Huang’s wife and who questioned Eluswami in July, told Reuters that “showing this video without a disclaimer or an asterisk is clearly misleading.”
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in 2020 that Huang’s fatal crash was likely caused by his distraction and Autopilot limitations. It said Tesla’s “ineffective monitoring of driver engagement” contributed to the crash.
Drivers can “fool the system,” making the Tesla system believe they were paying attention based on steering wheel feedback when they weren’t, Alluswamy said. But he said he doesn’t see any safety issues with Autopilot if drivers are paying attention.
