There’s a reason why European and Japanese auto companies, leaders in cruise control and other automated driving technologies, were slow to bring their innovations to America: the U.S. liability system.
Tesla has experienced one fatal crash as a result of imperfections in its self-driving technology—the death of a Florida driver when his car hit a tractor trailer crossing its path. Tesla founder Elon Musk makes a plausible argument that Tesla’s “Autopilot” is a net improver of safety. That won’t matter to trial lawyers making a case that Tesla didn’t sufficiently flag the system’s limitations. And Mr. Musk himself is guilty of statements that could be portrayed as encouraging excessive confidence in what he calls a “beta” system.
Mr. Musk’s frequent recourse to hyperbole lately has many analysts wondering what Elon is up to. A Journal story this week detailed 20 cases, over the past five years, of him touting financial or production goals that Tesla failed to meet.
In just the past few weeks, he set an implausible timetable for rolling out his mass-market Model 3 sedan. He floated a pie-in-the-sky “master plan” to build tractor trailers and pickup trucks. He justified Tesla’s bailout of another Musk-related company, Solar City, by saying the two would revolutionize the world energy system. Last year, he even casually asserted that Tesla eventually would be worth more than Apple.
His fan, the investor Ron Baron, told the Journal this week: “This guy wants to save the world.”