A former Tesla employee says he believes the technology powering the firm’s self-driving vehicles is not safe to be used on public roads.
Lukasz Krupski told the BBC: “I don’t think the hardware is ready and the software is ready. It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads. So even if you don’t have a Tesla, your children still walk on the footpath.”
Mr Krupski said he had found evidence in company data which suggested that aspects of the safe operation of vehicles with a certain level of autonomous or assistive-driving technology had not been followed.
Tesla employees confirmed to him, he said, a phenomenon of vehicles randomly braking in response to non-existent obstacles – known as “phantom braking”. This also arose in data he obtained about customer complaints.
Mr Krupski said he had felt compelled to share what he had found with safety and data protection authorities after first trying to go to his superiors.
The documents showed that dozens of Tesla employees reported how their vehicles braked independently, and for no apparent reason, when the autopilot was switched on, sometimes at high speeds. Tesla boss Elon Musk has been praising autopilot as a safety feature for years.
According to Mr Krupski, he alerted the authorities after his warnings did not get through internally. He then leaked internal documents to...
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — The Buffalo Club, a private city club that has operated for more than 150 years, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve claims that it falsely represented its eligibility...