Tesla's 2016 Promotional Video About Autopilot Technology Fooled the Public

Tesla's Autopilot team began engineering and recording "demonstration of system capabilities" at Elon Musk's request. (photo twitter @tesla)

JAKARTA – In 2016 Tesla showed a video to promote its self-driving technology in its product cars such as the ability to stop at a red light and accelerate at a green light. However, according to a senior engineer, they actually don't fully own the technology.

The video, which remains archived on Tesla's website, was released in October 2016 and was also promoted on Twitter by Chief Executive Elon Musk as proof that "Tesla is self-driving."

The video carries the tagline: “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He didn't do anything. The car drives itself.”

But the Tesla Model X can't drive itself with the technology Tesla has been deploying for so long. This is known from the testimony of Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, in the transcript of a deposition last July that was taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla over a fatal accident in 2018 involving a former Apple engineer.

Elluswamy said Tesla's Autopilot team actually began engineering and recording "demonstrations of system capabilities" at Musk's request.

"Tesla's technology is designed to assist with steering, braking, accelerating, and lane changes, but these features do not necessarily make the vehicle autonomous," the company said on its website.

According to Elluswamy, to actually make the video, Tesla used 3D mapping on a predetermined route from a house in Menlo Park, California, to Tesla's headquarters in Palo Alto.

"Actually the driver stepped in to take control in the trials," said Elluswamy, quoted by Reuters. Even while trying to show the Model X could park itself without a driver, a test car crashed into a fence in a Tesla parking lot.

"The purpose of the video is not to accurately describe what was available to customers in 2016. It is to describe what might be built into the system," Elluswamy said, according to a transcript of his testimony seen by Reuters.

When Tesla released the video, Musk tweeted, "Tesla drives himself (with absolutely no human input) through city street to highway to highway, then finds a parking space."

Tesla is now facing lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its driver assistance systems, as shown in the promotional video.

The US Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Tesla's claims that its electric vehicles will be self-driving by 2021, after a number of accidents, some fatal, involving Autopilot.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, also reported in 2021 that Tesla technicians had made a 2016 video promoting Autopilot without disclosing that the route had been mapped beforehand or that a car had failed trying to complete the shot.

When asked if the 2016 video showed the performance of Tesla's Autopilot system available in production cars at the time, Elluswamy replied emphatically: "No."

Elluswamy lost a lawsuit against Tesla over the 2018 crash in Mountain View, California, that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang.

Andrew McDevitt, the attorney who represented Huang's wife and who questioned Elluswamy in July, told Reuters it was "clearly misleading to show the video without any disclaimers or asterisks."

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in 2020 that Huang's fatal accident was most likely caused by the distraction and limitations of the Autopilot. It said Tesla's "ineffective driver engagement monitoring" had contributed to the crash.

Elluswamy said drivers can "fool the system", leading Tesla's system to believe they are paying attention to the car based on feedback from the steering wheel when they are not. But he said he saw no safety issues with Autopilot if drivers were paying attention to the road.