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Musk Supervised Misleading Self-Driving Tesla Demo: Report

Tesla’s video gave the impression that its cars could navigate autonomously. That wasn’t the case.

Elon Musk personally helped supervise a misleading promotional video in 2016 that made it look like Tesla cars could navigate autonomously, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The video began with text that read, “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” In truth, the car had been “hard-coded” to navigate its route, and even then it didn’t operate smoothly, the report said. In emails to staffers prior to the demo, Musk had promised to tell “the world that this is what the car *will* be able to do... not that it can do this upon receipt.” The discrepancies have emerged as key evidence as multiple legal battles play out over Tesla’s Autopilot technology. The company has maintained it was simply showing off its cars’ potential.