It is known that Elon Musk’s relationship with the truth is, well, let’s say complicated, and Tesla has been, for many years now, the most perfect example of this. We have already spoken, on other occasions, of what we could call Tesla’s two speeds. The first, the important, the fundamental, is the one that marks the work of its engineering teams, and that over the years has surprised us with its capacity for innovation.
The other speed, surely you already imagine it, is the one determined by the statements of Elon Musk.
If you read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs at the time, you will surely remember his interesting description of the reality-distorting effect that took place around him. For some reason, or more likely a mixture of several, what was possible and what was not blurred when he was around and, according to his biographer, this led Apple workers to go further and, at times, to achieve what seemed impossible.
I have been thinking for some time now that after reading Jobs’s biography (I take it for granted that he did so, of course), Elon Musk wanted to emulate the creator of Apple by making his words change reality in the same way that Jobs’s did. But of course, Musk is not Jobs, no matter how much some insist on comparing them, so that where the pioneer was able to promote feats, Musk remains in the role of telling lies.
The race towards autonomous driving, which in the middle of the last decade many saw as a spring, has turned out to be a marathon in which speed is important, but resistance and consistency are the key. Grandiose statements are of no use if, over time, what they assert is not confirmed. In this regard, just two days ago we told you that Mercedes has reached autonomous driving level 3 before Tesla, despite the fact that Elon Musk stated, at the beginning of 2021, that Tesla would achieve it before the end of that year, a blow to the picture of the company that comes just as some regulators have begun to tire of the company’s peddling of smoke.
And if that were not enough, today we know from Business Insider that a Tesla suffered a collision in Autopilot mode, precisely when an advertising spot was being recorded about this function. Obviously the recording was edited so that there was no sign that an accident had occurred (the car collided with a fence while trying to park) and, despite this, the company published the video on its website, where it is still finds.
In the superimposed text on the video we can read “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car drives itself”, but the truth is that the person sitting in the driver’s seat actually had to carry out the maneuver in which the Autopilot mode had suffered the collision. In addition, according to the same source cited by the article, the entire route that Tesla did carry out autonomously had previously been mapped in 3D by the company so that the car knew, to the millimeter, which route to follow and what he would find himself in it.
