‘Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality’ states poorly redacted report
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s public statements about the state of his automaker’s Autopilot assistive driving technology overestimate the system’s capabilities, according to documents released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Legal non-profit PlainSite obtained the DMV documents via the California Public Records Act and they include a summary, written by Miguel Acosta, chief of the DMV’s Autonomous Vehicles Branch, of a March 9, 2021 meeting between DMV officials and Tesla personnel. Acosta wrote that «DMV asked CJ [CJ Moore, director of Autopilot software at Tesla] to address, from an engineering perspective, Elon’s messaging about L5 capability by the end of the year.» This refers to a Twitter exchange at the beginning of the year. On December 31,2020, Comma AI’s Twitter account said to Musk, «We hear you are extremely confident that you’ll have level five [ full automation] next year…» and invited him to wager on that. On January 1, 2021, Musk responded, «Tesla Full Self-Driving will work at a safety level well above that of the average driver this year, of that I am confident. Can’t speak for regulators though.» But as Acosta recounts, Tesla engineers see things differently. «Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality per CJ,» wrote Acosta. An effort was made to redact this particular passage but it wasn’t very effective – selecting the unusually large area of whitespace then copying and pasting the result into a text editor reveals the white-on-white text.
