A 2016 video showing off Tesla’s then-new Autopilot feature was “staged” to show features not available to customers, a deposition by the director of the Autopilot software at Tesla recently revealed, APA reports citing Reuters.
According to Reuters, Ashok Elluswamy gave the deposition in July 2022 for a lawsuit filed by the family of former Apple engineer Walter Huang, who was killed in a 2018 car accident. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash partially on the limitation of the Autopilot software.
The 2016 video, which is still available on Tesla’s website, starts with the tagline: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” The footage then shows a Model X Tesla pulling out of a garage and driving to Tesla’s then-headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The driver keeps his fingers lightly on the steering wheel during the video but does not take control of the car.
The advert ends with the vehicle dropping the driver off at Tesla’s headquarters before parallel parking itself between two cars.
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