Car Tesla used to demonstrate Autopilot for commercial in 2016 smashed into a barrier during filming

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A car that Tesla used to show off its then-new Autopilot 2.0 system in 2016 crashed while filming a commercial for the carmaker – an advert that can still be found on the company’s site, but with the crash strategically missing.

The revelation comes as former Tesla employees recently told The New York Times that CEO Elon Musk may have contributed to the risks of his company’s Autopilot system because of his desire to use only cameras and ditch sensors. 

The video, meant to demonstrate Tesla’s Autopilot feature, begins with a warning that the Tesla Model S ‘is driving itself,’ despite the fact that there is someone seated in the driver’s seat throughout the commercial’s entirety.

‘The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons,’ a message flashes before the footage – filmed from the driver’s perspective – begins.

The message goes on to assure viewers that the driver ‘is not doing anything.’

The Autopilot feature is now found on all Tesla’s cars and allows the vehicles to perform basic driving functions such as steering, accelerating and braking autonomously.

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Then, the footage begins, set to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint it Black.’ The video is meant meant to show how autonomous the system – an update to an earlier version of Autopilot released in 2015 – could be. 

In the video, the driver sits with his hands off the wheel as the car embarks on a four-minute autonomous joyride in Palo Alto, around the EV company’s headquarters.

Meanwhile, Tesla has insisted that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel at all times when using Autopilot. 

The route for the video had been charted ahead of time by software that created a three-dimensional digital map – a feature previously unavailable to drivers using the former version of Autopilot, former members of the company’s Autopilot team told The New York Times.

At one point during filming, however, the car hit a roadside barrier on Tesla property and had to be repaired, three Tesla staffers who worked on the video revealed.

The final version of the ad omits this portion of the exhibition.

Tesla did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment concerning the alleged crash.  

At least 10 people have been killed in eight accidents in which Tesla’s Autopilot was engaged since 2016, according to reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency.

When Tesla’s Autopilot technology began, it initially incorporated cameras, radar and sensors.

For years, Autopilot incorporated the hardware into all of their vehicles, and Tesla even embarked on a project to craft its own radar technology. 

However, the three ex-staffers who worked on the project and spoke to The Times revealed to the paper that Musk had repeatedly told Autopilot team staffers that, since humans could drive with their eyes and without sensor technology, cars should be able to do the same, and drive with cameras alone. 

Musk wanted Autopilot to only use cameras and ditch radars and sensors

Earlier this year, however, Musk tasked engineers with building a car that relied only on cameras for its autopilot feature, ditching radar and sensors, sources told The Times. 

Schuyler Cullen, who headed a team that explored autonomous-driving possibilities at Samsung, told The Times that Musk’s cameras-only approach was destined to fail and not based on science. 

‘Cameras are not eyes! Pixels are not retinal ganglia! The F.S.D. computer is nothing like the visual cortex!’ Cullen declared to the outlet.

Meanwhile, Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye, a former Tesla supplier that has been testing technology similar to the carmaker’s, said Musk’s camera-only plan could work, but asserted that other sensors will likely be needed in the meantime. 

He also stated that Musk is known to exaggerate the capabilities of his company’s proprietary technologies, but that his statements should be taken with a grain of salt.

‘One should not be hung up on what Tesla says,’ Shashua told The Times. ‘Truth is not necessarily their end goal. The end goal is to build a business.’ 

Musk unveiled Autopilot 2.0 in October 2016, as well as the commercial in which the crash took place.

At the time, the CEO announced at a news conference that all new Tesla vehicles would include the cameras, computers, and other technological features to accomplish ‘full self driving’ – a term that suggests that the cars could operate safely on their own.

His statements, however, took the carmaker’s staffers by surprise, with many believing that Musk was making a promise that was impossible to keep, two people who worked on the project told The Times.

Sterling Anderson, who headed the project and has since started his own autonomous car company, called Aurora, reportedly told Tesla’s marketing and sales teams that it would be irresponsible to refer to the company’s Autopilot technology as ‘autonomous’ or ‘self-driving,’ saying it would mislead the public.

Despite this warning from the senior staffer, however, Tesla was soon using the term ‘full self driving’ as a standard way of describing its Autopilot feature.

By 2017, Tesla had begun to roll out a more advanced version of its Autopilot, which was, of course, dubiously tabbed ‘Full Self-Driving.’

The feature, which cost $10,000 for consumers at the time, was still in its Beta stage as of October of this year, even after four years of extensive updates.

In October, a further ‘Full Self-Driving’ update was offered to drivers that Tesla deemed ‘safe,’ by monitoring Tesla operators’ driving and subsequently awarding them a ‘safety score’ grade out of 100 – even though the car giant was – and still is – currently being probed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over multiple autopilot crashes, two of them deadly.   

Many of those smashes have involved Teslas slamming into emergency responder vehicles, sparking speculation that flashing lights may confuse the Teslas’ sensors which help operate the self-driving software.

Musk’s announcement has been condemned and he has been accused of using the general public as guinea pigs, with one New York woman whose husband died after a Tesla Model Y hit him in July, blasting the firm for ‘outsourcing testing.’

‘They outsourced the testing to total nonprofessionals and fans,’ said Joshua Brian Irwin, attorney for Bernadette Saint Jean, whose husband, Jean Louis, was killed on New York’s Long Island Expressway in July when a Tesla using automated features struck him on the side of the road while he changed a tire.

‘Of course they’re going to figure out how to hack the scoring system and cover up the AI’s flaws.’ 

Tesla previously raised eyebrows after unveiling ‘Ludicrous’ and ‘Insane’ modes on its cars, which let drivers accelerate extremely rapidly, and which some critics say encouraged drag racing. 

Investigations into fatal Tesla crashes

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a federal government agency designed to oversee transportation safety in the United States and prevent vehicle-related crashes, is currently investigating the crash.

Jean Louis’s death joins 11 other Tesla accidents they are probing, including a December 2019 smash in Indiana that saw young mom Jenna Monet die of her injuries. 

Meanwhile, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy told The Washington Post in September that she was worried Tesla was rolling out new features without addressing the Board’s prior safety recommendations.

They include limiting the use of automated features to the conditions for which they were designed and developing better driver monitoring. 

Homendy also spoke to The Times on Monday, saying the Musk’s language regarding his cars’ autonomous capabilities can be misleading.

‘Where I get concerned is the language that’s used to describe the capabilities of the vehicle,’ said Homendy, whose organization has investigated accidents involving Autopilot and criticized the system’s design.

‘It can be very dangerous,’ the safety head concluded. 

The company says that the emphasis on drivers meeting the aforementioned safety criteria and caution as to the update’s wider release was meant to ensure that the feature only gets granted to the safest of road users – but others argue the criteria encourages the opposite.

‘The lesson of Safety Score Beta is to gun every yellow light,’ wrote one Twitter user hours after the update’s release on October 7, adding that if drivers do not slow their car considerably before coming to a stop, ‘you’re gonna get dinged for hard braking.’

Sure enough, in November, Tesla recalled nearly 12,000 vehicles that were part of the Full Self Driving beta test, after the company deployed a software update that they conceded could cause crashes by the unexpected activation of the cars’ emergency braking system.