Member-only story
Musk Overruled Tesla Engineers, And Now They Are In Serious Trouble
One of Tesla’s key technologies lies in tatters, and it is all Musk’s fault.
Over the years, we have witnessed Tesla’s incredible rise to power, and they now stand as a juggernaut of the EV world. But one of Tesla’s most important promises has yet to be fulfilled: true self-driving cars. In fact, according to Musk, we should already have millions of Tesla robotaxis shuttling around the globe. Yet, far from this utopian vision coming true, Tesla is actually slipping behind in the autonomous vehicle race — and by quite a margin! So what happened to cause this fall from grace? Well, thanks to a report from the Washington Post, we now know the real reason, and we’ve come to understand that it is all Musk’s fault.
To understand this whole debacle, we first need to understand how autonomous vehicles work and why Tesla’s recent approach is counterproductive. I already covered this topic in a previous article, so just consider this a quick recap. Most autonomous or driver-assistance systems use a suite of different sensors around the car to understand the world around them and then use artificial intelligence to make driving decisions based on that data. These sensors include cameras, ultrasonic sensors, radar, and lidar. Why are there so many different sensors…
