In an internal memo – which was requested via the American equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act (Wob) – Tesla writes that it will not be possible to get self-driving cars on the road this year. Elon Musk has been saying for years that autonomous Teslas are coming soon, even though he is pushing his own impossible deadlines further and further. In 2019, the Tesla CEO was sure it was going to happen in 2020. Now the story is that it will happen this year.
Tweet from Elon Musk does not match reality
Anyway, Musk has been known to like to exaggerate. And this is also evident from the above-mentioned internal documents. During the presentation of the quarterly figures, the Canadian American South African emphasized again how good Tesla’s self-driving technology is. But CJ Moore, head of software development at Tesla, strongly disagrees with Musk’s claims – including on Twitter. “Elon’s tweet does not correspond to reality, according to CJ,” the documents requested.
Tesla says Musk is hugely ahead of the facts
In a meeting with California regulators, Moore said, among other things, that Musk is hugely ahead of the facts. The documents say, “Tesla has indicated that Elon is expressing expectations based on the current pace of innovation when talking about level 5 autonomous capabilities. Tesla cannot indicate whether it will reach level 5 by the end of this calendar year.” And if you cannot indicate that now, it will not happen this year.
Current cars are at level 2 in terms of autonomy
Self-driving cars are divided into levels. At level 2 (which Tesla and almost all other manufacturers are now on) a vehicle can accelerate, brake and steer itself, but only in certain situations and only under the supervision of a driver. Level 5 is full autonomy, anytime, anywhere. Popularly and in the media, a Tesla is often referred to as a self-driving car on Autopilot, but that is unjustified. Autopilot is nothing more than a collaboration between a number of semi-automatic assistance systems. In Germany the name is not allowed because it is misleading.