Putting the vehicle on Autopilot is like taking a sleeping pill: it is much more hard to maintain passive attention over time than to actively drive the auto. The collision sheared off the driver’s side mirror and caused exterior damage to both cars. There were no injuries reported.
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Reuters also reached out to four other owners of Tesla vehicles in other parts of China, and the owners corroborated Liu’s story that Tesla’s front-line sales staff described the the function in Chinese as “self-driving” and that demonstrators also took their hands off the wheel of the auto while demonstrating the function. The driver is expected to be able to be available for occasional control.
O’Connell told Automotive News that Tesla has been “very clear” that it would only sell its cars under a direct-sales model. Until then, it’s assisted driving.
Reuters interviewed four other Tesla owners in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai.
The owner of the auto, 33-year old programmer, Luo Zhen is however blaming the autopilot feature of the Model S for the crash claiming the Tesla sales staff had overblown the self-driving capabilities of the vehicle during the sales process.
On the long term, I think this incident can have positive effects for the company, at least as far as understanding that all these accidents and crashes aren’t just the fault of the drivers as Tesla repeatedly claims. And although China, like the USA, hasn’t figured out clear-cut autonomous driving regulations, current Chinese law does mandate a driver keep both hands on the wheel at all times.
Language issues may be to blame for the confusion.
With the most recent allegation of a collision while a Tesla Model S was in Autopilot mode, the California-based automaker is hustling up a new version of the semi-autonomous technology that is bolstered with more technology. The news agency added that the term “zidong jiashi”, which literally translates to “self-driving” can be seen several times on Tesla’s Chinese portal. Luo posted the video from his dash cam on Chinese social media platform Weibo. The v7.0 system includes Autosteer, a new Autopilot feature. He admits he was checking his phone or watching his car’s navigation screen at the time of the accident and only looked up every few seconds.
Despite Tesla’s protestations that it is not responsible, it appears its sales staff is saying one thing while the company is saying another.
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Yet while this ban continues, the state’s Treasury Department is investing in Tesla Motors stock-and it even bought more shares recently. It will need to solve is communication issues quickly if it wants to avoid negative publicity in the hugely important Chinese market.
