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by gizmo 2806 days ago
Yes, that video was a scam. The car took a hardcoded route and they simply kept trying over and over again for a take where the driver didn't have to take over. It's estimated they needed over 100 attempts to get usable self-driving footage.

Now they're removing FSD from the website in response to DoJ pressure.

1 comments

Source?
That's probably the most reasonable interpretation of their disengagement report for 2016 and 2017. Still speculation, though.

Hundreds of disengagements, all in a few days in October 2016.

Consistent with multiple attempts of filming their self driving promo.

No disengagements apart from that in 2 years.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/f1873c87-4f21-4beb...

This is one of the stronger conclusions by, of all things, $TSLAQ Twitter. The conclusion is derived from the fact that Elon's plane made two very recent visits to D.C., that none of the actual salespeople were prepared, and that there is precedent of companies under investigation to pre-comply with DoJ requests to drastically reduce charges under settlement.

Most of these $TSLAQ people are, of course, short-sellers, so take it with a fair bit of salt.

Especially wrt the DoJ claim. What does the Department of Justice have to do with anything?
> What does the Department of Justice have to do with anything?

While I haven't heard anything about the DoJ related to the self-driving feature, how they might be involved is pretty obvious:

The DoJ prosecutes federal crimes, including, reportedly, a recent criminal referral from the SEC.

While the trigger for that was Musk's tweets, federal criminal investigations aren't narrowly restricted to the conduct which triggered them; Tesla has made representations, regarding the self-driving feature to investors as well as consumers; to the extent those representations did not fully accurately represent Tesla’s knowledge, and materially impacts Telsa’s expected costs and outlook, that's a potentially criminal securities fraud.

Himself?