COLLISION COURSE

Tesla Self-Driving Video Was Staged, Engineer Testifies

The 2016 video touted abilities beyond the electric car’s control, a senior engineer admitted.

Tesla misled customers with a widely shared 2016 video that touted their car’s supposed self-driving capabilities, a senior engineer testified. “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all),” CEO Elon Musk tweeted alongside the video showing the Model X car being able to stop at red lights and accelerate at a green light on its own. In reality, the video was staged and the car couldn’t drive itself, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, testified as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the wife of an Apple engineer who died in a 2018 Tesla crash. “The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system,” Elluswamy said, according to transcripts obtained by Reuters. Tesla also faces a criminal probe by the Department of Justice over misleading claims amid several crashes. Tesla technology is designed to assist the driver but does not “make the vehicle autonomous,” the company now says on its website.