A Tesla crashed into a fence during filming for the company's self-driving ad, Autopilot director testified

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Businessinsider.com: “A Tesla crashed into a fence during filming for the company's self-driving ad, Autopilot director testified”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

In footage that was left out of a 2016 video promoting Tesla's self-driving technology, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla's parking lot, Tesla Autopilot software director Ashok Elluswamy said, according to a recent report from Reuters.

The engineer said that the car crashed into the fence while trying to park itself. Drivers had to disengage the software and take control in test runs for the video, the publication reported.

In the video, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoted on Twitter, the company included overlay text saying: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." 

"Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking spot," Musk said on Twitter, sharing the video "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas."

Reuters reported on Tuesday that the video had been staged to show the vehicle recognizing and responding to traffic lights — capabilities the system did not have at the time. The publication cited the transcript of a July deposition from Elluswamy that was taken as evidence in a lawsuit against the electric-car maker over a 2018 fatal crash involving an Apple engineer.

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—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2024