Matt Rourke/AP Photo
- Elon Musk said he thinks that no other CEO pays as much attention to safety as him, per the FT.
- He told the FT that he hasn’t misled Tesla owners with the company’s Autopilot or Full Self-Driving.
- Musk said Tesla owners should read all the details about self-driving when they order the vehicle.
Elon Musk said on Wednesday that he thinks that there’s no other CEO in the world who pays as much attention to safety as he does, according to a Financial Times report.
It comes as Musk was crowned the FT’s Person of the Year for 2021, days after Time magazine named the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as its Person of the Year for his commitment to space exploration and the environment.
In an interview with the FT, Musk said he hasn’t misled or risked Tesla owners’ safety with the company’s self-driving assistance software, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.
“Read what it says when you order a Tesla,” Musk told the FT. “Read what it says when you turn it on. It’s very, very clear.”
Musk noted that Tesla’s high safety ratings and NASA’s use of SpaceX rockets to send its own astronauts into space prove that he focuses on safety.
“I don’t think there’s a CEO on this planet that cares more about safety than me,” he told the FT.
SpaceX has won numerous NASA contracts over the years — the biggest one so far is the lunar launch contract, which involved Musk’s company beating out Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Although SpaceX has mostly been in the clear over safety risks, Tesla has faced its challenges.
The electric car company’s self-driving software has come under criticism for being involved in a number of car crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in August opened an investigation into Tesla’s driver-assist Autopilot, following 11 crashes in which Teslas struck vehicles at first-responder scenes since 2018.
Regulators and lawmakers have criticized Tesla’s Autopilot feature, saying the name makes drivers think the cars are autonomous when they aren’t.
Powered by WPeMatico
