Mobileye chairman and chief technology officer Amnon Shashua has shed light on the company’s recent split with Tesla, saying that the California-based electric vehicle maker was “pushing the envelope in terms of safety”.
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After a widely reported fatality in a Tesla Model S that occurred in May but was not publicly announced until the end of June, Mobileye stated its then-current EyeQ3 was not created to detect vehicles coming from the side, that it only looked ahead.
For its part, a Tesla spokeswoman responded to Shashua’s comments, saying that Tesla had never described the Autopilot system as self-driving tool, but as a “convenience feature” that still required the attention of the driver in case they need to override the system in the event of emergencies.
Tesla’s Autopilot semi-autonomous feature will get a major update Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Mobileye claimed the breakup was its own idea. The statement is the latest in a series of shots that Tesla has taken on Mobileye since the two companies split in July.
About Autopilot, Shashua told Reuters, It is not created to cover all possible crash situations in a safe manner. “No matter how you spin it, it is not designed for that”.
Mobileye previously had said its system was never created to spot cross traffic, but it didn’t know if Tesla had modified the system.
Sashua continued, “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”. That’s what Amnon Shashua was alluding to when he alluded to the company being uncomfortable with how it believed Tesla was presenting the system to the public. In fact, the firm has provided warnings each time owners activate the system. Mobileye has made substantial efforts since then to take more control on how this project can be steered to a proper functional safety system. At issue is whether Tesla rolled out the system before it was ready, essentially allowing it to be tested by owners. “Tesla has been developing its own vision capability in-house for some time with the goal of accelerating performance improvements”. The pronouncement also cited an inability on the part of Mobileye to keep pace with the development of Tesla’s products as a factor in that decision.
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Tesla said in a statement on Thursday that relations broke down with Mobileye over Tesla’s plans to develop its own, competing vision system to help drivers avoid collisions. Gao Jubin is suing Tesla after his 23-year-old son was killed while driving one of the company’s vehicles.
