Tesla staged Autopilot demo video, says director of software

Tesla’s much-hyped video of its Autopilot driver-assist system “driving by itself” from 2016 was not actually driving itself, according to Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of Autopilot software.

In a recent deposition, Elluswamy said that the video titled “Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas” was intended to “portray what was possible to build the system” rather than what customers could actually expect the system to do.

The video, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a link to saying that “Tesla drives itself,” shows a Tesla driving and parking itself, avoiding obstacles, and obeying red and green lights. The video starts with a title card saying that “the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons” and that “he is...

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