To create the video, Tesla used 3D mapping on a predetermined route from a home in Menlo Park, California, to Tesla’s then-headquarters in Palo Alto.
The drivers intervened to take control in the test run, he said. He said that when trying to demonstrate that the Model X could park itself without a driver, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla’s parking lot.
According to a transcript of his testimony seen by Reuters, “the video was not intended to portray what was available to customers in 2016. It was to portray what could be built into the system.”
When Tesla released the video, Musk tweeted, “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) through urban streets to highways, then finds a parking spot.”
Tesla faces lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its driver assistance systems.
The US Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into Tesla’s claims that its electric vehicles can drive themselves in 2021 after several accidents, some of them fatal, involving Autopilot, Reuters reported.
The New York Times reported in 2021 that Tesla engineers had created a 2016 video to promote Autopilot, without disclosing whether the route had been mapped out beforehand or citing unnamed sources to complete a car shoot. Crashed while trying.
When asked whether the 2016 video showed a demonstration of the Tesla Autopilot system available in a production car at the time, Eluswamy said, “It doesn’t.”