Elon Musk has some choice words for reporters who churn out negative coverage of Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving technology, saying: “You’re killing people”.
The South African-born entrepreneur made the statement during a briefing with journalists after announcing that all Tesla vehicles produced from this week will be fitted with the hardware needed for full self-driving capability.
Musk said that the California-based automaker’s semi-autonomous driving aid, branded Autopilot, had received an unfair amount of negative attention in the media, after numerous reports focused on sometimes-fatal crashes that allegedly involved the technology.
“One of the things I should mention that frankly has been quite disturbing to me is the degree of media coverage of Autopilot crashes, which are basically almost none relative to the media coverage of the 1,2 million people that die every year in manual crashes,” Musk said, according to various US reports.
“It’s something that I think does not reflect well upon the media. It really doesn’t. Because – and you need to think carefully about this – because if, in writing some article that’s negative, you effectively dissuade people from using an autonomous vehicle, you’re killing people,” he said.
Musk believes that full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be “substantially safer than a human driver”, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.
