Tesla May Restrict Autopilot Mode ‘To Minimize People Doing Crazy Things’

During a quarterly financial call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned some new limits may be imposed on the company’s Autopilot feature due to “some fairly crazy videos on YouTube” showing drivers behaving dangerously while the car is in control.

Although Tesla doesn’t recommend taking your hands off the wheel while the car is in Autopilot mode, that’s exactly what people are doing, leading to near-collisions with other vehicles as in the following video:

“This is not good,” Musk said. “We’ll put some additional constraints on when Autopilot can be activated to minimize people doing crazy things.”

So, are a few wild drivers spoiling Tesla’s Autopilot for everybody?

Musk didn’t elaborate on the specifics of the new restrictions that Autopilot users could soon face, though it’s likely that they would show up in the form of another over-the-air software update. On the positive side, Musk said that there’s some evidence that Autopilot has helped prevent “many accidents” so far, among the 40,000 Tesla vehicles that have the semi-autonomous capabilities.

The following YouTube video illustrates Musk’s point, with Autopilot appearing to slow the Tesla vehicle down to avoid a collision with another car that was making a dangerous turn into oncoming traffic:

The Tesla CEO also said he is aware of some users experiencing errors with Autopilot, but he downplayed its significance. “It was described as a beta release,” Musk explained. “The system will learn over time and get better and that’s exactly what it’s doing. It will start to feel quite refined within a couple of months.”

Of course, the outspoken Musk eventually shifted gears to talk about the future of Autopilot and ultimately fully self-driving cars. “All cars will be fully autonomous in the long term,” said Musk. “I think it will be quite unusual to see new cars that don’t have full autonomy in the 15-to-20 year time frame. For Tesla, it will be a lot sooner than that. Any cars that are being made that don’t have autonomy will have negative value.”