Musk oversaw video that exaggerated Tesla’s self-driving capabilities

The email sheds light on Musk’s mindset before he and Tesla then made claims about capabilities that have yet to materialise more than six years later. After cycling through several different iterations of hardware, the company to this day tells customers using Autopilot and the system it markets as Full Self-Driving to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any moment. — AP

Elon Musk oversaw the creation of a 2016 video that exaggerated the abilities of Tesla Inc’s driver-assistance system Autopilot, even dictating the opening text that claimed the company’s car drove itself, according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg.

Musk wrote to Tesla’s Autopilot team after 2am California time in October 2016 to emphasise the importance of a demonstration drive to promote the system, which the chief executive officer made a splashy announcement about a week later. In an Oct 19 call with reporters and blog post, Tesla said that all its cars from that day forward would ship with the hardware necessary for full self-driving capability.