"He's Full Of Crap": GM Exec Slams Musk As Car War Breaks Out

Elon Musk says the upcoming Tesla Model 3 has the hardware to enable full-self driving capability. But GM’s self-driving car czar thinks he’s full of crap.

GM"s director of autonomous vehicle integration Scott Miller told a group of Australian journalists in Detroit on Thursday that Musk was “full of crap”, explaining that a “level 5” – that is, fully autonomous – vehicle would require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sensors. Even for a company like Tesla, which investors have practically encouraged to burn through large sums of cash, offering such an advanced vehicle for between $30,000 and $50,000 would be an impossibility.

"I think he"s full of crap," Mr Miller said. "To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous car [full self-driving] with cameras and radar, I don"t know how you do that."

Tesla and a handful of other car companies are testing autopilot in Australia, according to the Leader.

The company is planning to price the Model 3, which just started rolling off the production line at Tesla’s California factory, at $50,000 in Australia. The car reportedly incorporates cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors for self-driving.

However, as the Leader points out, the Model 3 won’t be able to use Tesla’s controversial autopilot feature until the company’s engineers perfect the software. A Tesla driver in Florida became the first person to die in an accident involving Autopilot. Eventually, the NHTSA ruled that Tesla wasn’t at fault in the crash. But since then, other customers have complained that they found the way in which autopilot was marketed to be misleading.

With this in mind, perhaps Musk should consider the consequences before exaggerating the functionality of a feature like autopilot.   

Tesla Sued Over Model X "Spontaneous Acceleration"

Is Tesla having the worst year ever?  Over the course of 2016, we"ve written frequently about Tesla"s many setbacks including several auto-pilot related crashes, hackers taking control of moving vehicles, egregious levels of cash burn and a very controversial merger with SolarCity.

Now, as 2016 draws to a close, Tesla once again finds itself in the spotlight as a Model X owner has filed a lawsuit alleging that his electric SUV suddenly accelerated while being parked, causing it to crash through the garage of his home and into his living room, injuring the driver and a passenger.

In the lawsuit filed Friday in California, Ji Chang Son said that one night in September, he was slowly pulling into his driveway as his garage door opened when the car suddenly sped forward.  Unfortunately for Tesla, the lawsuit seeks class action status noting at least seven other complaints from owners of similar incidents.  Per CBC News:

"The vehicle spontaneously began to accelerate at full power, jerking forward and crashing through the interior wall of the garage, destroying several wooden support beams in the wall and a steel sewer pipe, among other things, and coming to rest in plaintiffs" living room," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, seeks class-action status. It cites seven other complaints registered in a database compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) dealing with sudden acceleration.

Not surprisingly, after conducting a "thorough investigation," Tesla concluded that their cars are still extremely awesome and therefore any malfunction in operation was certainly due to user error.

Tesla said in a statement that it had "conducted a thorough investigation" of the claims made by Son.

"The evidence, including data from the car, conclusively shows that the crash was the result of Mr. Son pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100 per cent," a Tesla spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Tesla said it has various ways to protect against pedal misapplication, including using its autopilot sensors to distinguish between erroneous pedal application and normal cases.

Of course, the only question now is how many "plumes of smoke" have to be discovered before Tesla investors start to worry that there might actually be a fire?