You Gonna Believe Me, Or Your Lyin’ Eyes? It’s Driverless!

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What happens to a Tesla when you leave it on autopilot and do other things. You die, as this Florida driver did when his car ran into an 18-wheeler at 68 miles per hour.

Donald Trump has gone away, perhaps temporarily, but the culture he shaped remains — a culture that imagines the world it wants or that it fears, unconstrained by reality, and then lies about it. Lies have become to us as water is to fish, and contenders to take up Trump’s mantle as the lying king are many. Prominent among them is Elon Musk.

Elon Musk says that a fully autonomous Tesla (the electric car his company makes) is less than a year away. He has been saying that for about ten years now. He says it whenever his company’s stock starts to tank. In April of 2019, when Tesla was suffering a serious cash crunch, Musk announced that there would be one million fully autonomous robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020. By the end of 2020 not one robotaxi had been built, but Tesla has sold $3 billion dollars worth of stock. Works like a charm. 

You could call that excessive optimism that just happens to enrich him, or you could call it a lie that works. But last year he removed the ambiguity.

Tesla marketing informed the owners of its cars that for $10,000, they could download a software update that would give their car Full Self-Driving Capability. That’s what the company called it, Full Self-Driving Capability, an update from its equally misnamed Auto Pilot. The word “full” does not imply, it states, that when the software is installed, you will have an autonomous self-driving car.

The claims moved the California Department of Motor Vehicles to inquire how it was that Tesla was marketing a driverless car without ever having applied for permission to test a driverless car, as state law requires. Tesla’s response was quite different from its marketing materials. Shoot, a Tesla attorney wrote to the DMV, that’s not a driverless car, far from it:

 “there are circumstances and events to which the system is not capable of recognizing or responding. These include static objects and road debris, emergency vehicles, construction zones, large uncontrolled intersections with multiple incoming ways, occlusions, adverse weather, complicated or adversarial vehicles in the driving path, unmapped roads.” As a result, “the driver maintains responsibility.” 

Oh. So when you’ve spent $10,000 and installed the “Full Self-Driving Capability” what you will have is pretty much what you had before. A car that can do a few electronic tricks but, like all other cars that are called “driverless,” requires the full time attention of a driver. 

The California DMV did not issue a cease-and-desist order, or impose a fine, or sue the company, or order it to stop the marketing campaign, or apply for a testing program. It did nothing. 

Tesla stock is in another swoon, having lost over a quarter of a trillion dollars in value in March. Stand by for another announcement, any minute now, from the new lying king.