Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been criticized by regulators and shareholders for his claims about Tesla’s self-driving technology, and now he is being criticized by a senior figure.
Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, criticized Musk and his company in an interview on CNN. This morning.
Mr Wozniak said on the show: “Boys, if you want an AI study that goes wrong and gets a lot of claims and tries to kill you every chance possible – get a Tesla.
“I believe what he said, that cars will drive themselves across the country by the end of 2016.
“Oh, I had to upgrade to that model! And then it won’t do anything, I can say that it will never spread across the country.
“And he said: here we have a new one with eight cameras and it will be nationwide by the end of 2017.
“I really believe those things but they don’t even come close to reality.”
Mr Wozniak said he admires Mr Musk for some of the things he has done for the world, including helping with the transition to electric vehicles. However, he said the benefits were overshadowed by the Tesla CEO’s overstatement about the capabilities of his vehicles.
Shareholders recently filed a lawsuit against Tesla in federal court in San Francisco, alleging that they were misled by the company with false and misleading claims about the technology that “created a risk of accident and injury serious consequences”.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a US regulator, has two active investigations underway into the system, one of which is at the technical analysis stage. and is looking into collisions with stationary emergency vehicles, while the other investigation is looking at virtual brake reports.
The agency confirmed it was investigating the 17th fatal crash involving Autopilot, after a Model S collided with a parked fire truck in Contra Costa County, California in February.
Tesla is also said to be the subject of a US Department of Justice probeallegedly testing whether Tesla misled consumers, investors and regulators by making unsubstantiated claims about the capabilities of its driver-assist technology.
In a pardon for Tesla, a jury in California backed Tesla last month in a case involving its Autopilot system.
The jury rejected the claim by plaintiff, Justine Hsu, that her Tesla Model S autopilot failed to operate safely and gave her no damage.
It is believed to be the first trial involving a crash in which Autopilot is operating, and legal experts say that while the ruling is not binding in other cases, it could help determine strategic formations of the legal groups of other claimants.
The jurors said they believe distracted driver was the cause, and Tesla has explicitly warned that its Level 2 system is not driverless technology.
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