Name: Tesla’s New Autopilot Software Won’t Fix its Reputation
Uploaded: 2016-09-12
Duration: 2 min 42 s
Description: Why Elon Musk may be to blame

Tesla has released a new version of its autopilot software. Robert, will this improve the reputation of the self- driving car? Of course it will, Andrew. Every update, every tweak, every iteration of the software, self- driving cars are gonna become closer to reality. Right now, what we have that's closest, it's in production right now, is Tesla's autopilot feature, which steers and brakes on your behalf. But this technology hasn't been without mishaps of its own. It led the death of a driver in Florida. Horrible. Horrible and terrible. Very unfortunate, but Elon Musk said with the latest update that perhaps this could've actually prevented that from happening. Look, I think autopilot is awesome, and it should definitely be a point of pride for Tesla. But at the same time A lot of the self- driving cars kind of reputational damages has been because of the [ INAUDIBLE ]. The idea that you could say well, this accident wouldn't have happened if we had just pushed up the update that we already had in the can. That is not gonna work in the auto industry. The problem is in the technology with is clearly very cool. The issue is the Silicon Valley Beta culture, this mindset that says you can reiterate on a production vehicle. This is the car industry we're talking about here. It's not that easy. What's the alternative though, I mean you're going to put these vehicles out on the road and just have them perfectly formed and engineers are going to have them constructed immaculately. [ LAUGH ] That's not going to happen. That's impossible. There are going to be accidents. There are going to be injuries. Elon Musk said this himself. The trick is just how do you make it so that the accidents and injuries are vanishingly rare and getting better over time. Look I'm not expecting every auto maker put a perfect car on the road right off the bat. You don't need to do that, it has to be perfect enough though. I mean look at this Tesla update, it's essentially just leaning on radar data more heavily, that could've been figured out before hand, before it hit the road Radar's been around a long time and that's the issue here, I think. Humans aren't gonna use your technology the way you intend them to. They're not gonna leave their hands on the wheel when you say they need to. They're gonna let go even when they're using auto pilot and they're not supposed to and that's That's my great concern. People are already afraid of self- driving cars. Elon Musk doesn't need to give them another reason to be. Look, I think you're right. You've said it yourself, we live in an imperfect world. And you can't foresee every situation that's gonna end up as a Disaster possibly. But the truth of the matter is that these cars are out there. They're on the road right now, people are driving them. And if we hold our innovators back and we cripple them, prevent them from pushing boundaries and pushing technology forward, we're gonna stagnate. And there won't be any improvements on the technology to begin with. That's a fair point. For one show with a great reputation, come to fortune. com for more Tech Debate. [ SOUND ]