Chapter 29

What did this illustrate? First, Tesla's self-driving. When it drove itself, it really did feel pretty cool. But at the same time, we could see that for the public—ordinary people, including those of us working in autonomous driving—it was still, one could say, in a primitive stage. Especially over the past two months, after two people died in succession because of this particular autonomous-driving system, humanity's fear of the uncertainty surrounding this new thing erupted all at once. And just last fall, this CEO was saying that Tesla's self-driving technology might even be better than humans. Yet two owners paid for it with their lives in one go. That was quite a slap in the face. But logically speaking, traffic accidents were nothing new; it was just that they had become linked to self-driving.

What was even more worth pondering was Tesla's reaction to the matter. Compared with Tesla's previous crisis PR efforts, I thought this one was really not very smart. Tesla officially came out and said that its Autopilot was merely an assistance system, not an unmanned system. In other words, it could only help you drive; it could not replace a person. At the time, both drivers had been doing other things and had not kept their hands on the steering wheel, so the implication was: you guys took it too far. You could not blame Tesla. But that was playing a bit of a word game. Assisted driving and unmanned driving really were different concepts, but what did its English name mean?

It did not mean "assistance," so that alone could mislead people. And there were plenty of fans shaving while driving, eating while driving, and so on, yet Tesla neither called on them to stop nor warned them. Instead, it adopted an attitude of tacit