Tesla Engineer Testifies Impressive Self-Driving Video Was Staged

In 2016, Tesla entered mainstream consciousness when a viral video showed the automaker’s autonomous car having the ability to stop at a red light, accelerate once it turned green, and essentially prove that the vehicle “drives itself.” 

However, it appears the shot—which Chief Executive Elon Musk promoted on Twitter—was not using the company’s groundbreaking technology but was in fact staged, with the actual Model X crashing into a fence during test runs. 

This information comes from previously unreported testimony by Ashok Elluswamy, Director of Autopilot Software at Tesla, who spoke in a deposition as part of a lawsuit involving a fatal 2018 crash. The documents were seen by Reuters.

In the video, which was meant to be a demonstration of Autopilot’s capabilities, the automaker makes the claim that the driver was only in the seat “for legal reasons,” and that “the car is driving itself.” 

The reality was rather different, however, with it now being unveiled that the Tesla had used a 3D map of a pre-determined route in order for the car to get from a house in Menlo Park, California, to its then-headquarters in Palo Alto. 

Arguing that the intent of the video was not to “accurately portray” what customers could achieve in 2016, Elluswamy said the campaign’s aim was to give an idea of “what was possible to build into the system” in the future. 

Things are heating up for Tesla and Musk as they face a series of investigations at both federal and state levels. The automaker hasn’t escaped scrutiny overseas either, as other countries begin to question the validity of its self-driving claims. 

[via Reuters and Jalopnik, cover image via Sylvain Robin | Dreamstime.com]