Testimony reveals that Tesla lied to people about self-driving

Reuters revealed the testimony of a senior Tesla engineer, in which he said that the famous electric car maker promoted “unavailable” technologies in its vehicles during an old video clip.

The aforementioned video dates back to 2016, and Ashok Eluswami, the director of the self-driving program in Tesla, took evidence in a lawsuit against the company, as part of the investigation into a fatal accident that occurred in 2018.

In October 2016, Tesla released a video to promote its self-driving feature, with the aim of demonstrating capabilities such as stopping at a red light and accelerating with a green light.

 The video is still archived on the Tesla website, and was promoted on Twitter by Elon Musk, CEO of the company, as evidence that "the car drives itself."

And the engineer said that "the capabilities that appeared in the video were not available in the car," indicating that the company is promoting features not found in its cars.

"The intent of the video was not to accurately depict what was available to customers in 2016, but rather to explain what could have been included in the system," he added, according to a transcript of his testimony, which was seen by Reuters.

When asked if the video showed the self-driving system available in cars at the time, Eluswami replied: "No. It's not."

Reuters said neither Tesla, Eluswami, nor Musk responded to a request for comment.

Although the aforementioned video is accompanied by the phrase “the person sitting in the driver’s seat does nothing” and that “the car drives itself”, Tesla requires its car drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel while using the self-driving feature.

The company says on its website that the Tesla is designed to assist with steering, stopping, changing speed and lane, but its features "do not make the car autonomous".

And the previous year, The New York Times reported that Tesla engineers produced a 2016 video to promote self-driving, without declaring that the car had already recognized the road, or that it had crashed while completing filming.

Tesla faces lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its self-driving feature.

The US Department of Justice had launched a criminal investigation into the company's claims that its electric cars could drive themselves in 2021, after a number of accidents, some of them fatal.

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