Yahoo Autos Former Tesla Supplier Says Autopilot Pushed Safety Envelope
Tesla's revolutionary Autopilot driver assistance feature has been in the news extensively over the last few months, though not for positive reasons. The May death of Jacob Brown, a Model S owner whose car had Autopilot active at the time of his fatal crash, has raised serious questions about the feature's safety. Damningly, many Tesla employees reportedly raised concerns regarding this type of situation months before the fatal crash.
Now, Reuters reports that the chairman of Mobileye, formerly an important parts supplier for Tesla, said it broke ties with the company because it was "pushing the envelope in terms of safety."
"It is not designed to cover all possible crash situations in a safe manner," Mobileye chairman Amnon Shashua told Reuters. "No matter how you spin it, [Autopilot] is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system."
Tesla, for its part, has maintained that Autopilot remains in beta and that it's not a replacement for the driver. The controversy stems from the fact that the system lets drivers take their hands off the steering wheel for large periods of time, unlike similar products from Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.
Mobileye supplied hardware chips and software used in Tesla's Autopilot system. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in July that the split between the two companies was because Mobileye couldn't up with Tesla's quick development cycles.
"Long term this is going to hurt the interests of the company and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety," Shaushua said.
Usually automakers and suppliers keep spats like this quiet, so it's interesting to see this continue to escalate in a public manner. All in all, it seems many on the inside of Autopilot's genesis thought it was too much, too soon.
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