SOME AUTOMAKERS MIGHT have been fazed by facing the news that Tesla, Inc. (TSLA on the Nasdaq) faced today, as the Intercept published video showing two different angles of the Thanksgiving Day eight-car pileup on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which was apparently caused by a Tesla in so-called “Full Self-Driving mode” arbitrarily swerving into the left lane of fast-flowing traffic and braking to a stop.
The Intercept reported:
Tesla vehicles using its Autopilot driver assistance system—Full Self-Driving mode has an expanded set of features atop Autopilot—were involved in 273 known crashes from July 2021 to June of last year, according to NHTSA data. Teslas accounted for almost 70 percent of 329 crashes in which advanced driver assistance systems were involved, as well as a majority of fatalities and serious injuries associated with them, the data shows. Since 2016, the federal agency has investigated a total of 35 crashes in which Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” or “Autopilot” systems were likely in use. Together, these accidents have killed 19 people.
The Intercept went on to note that Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who had tweeted to announce the deployment of Full Self-Driving Beta earlier on the very day of the crash—had previously “said that full self-driving was an ‘essential’ feature for Tesla to develop, going as far as saying, ‘It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.”
But despite the technology at the center of its future being once again exposed as a lethal fraud, TSLA kept its share price higher than basically zero. It lost 92 cents on Tuesday, but closed at $118.85, after a week of gains from the previous Tuesday’s closing price of $108.10
The $10.75 that Tesla gained in the past seven days would have been enough to buy any of the following:
• 15 yards of 36-inch food-grade No. 10 cheesecloth
• 10 packets of Carnation Liquid Essentials instant breakfast drink (4 chocolate, 3 vanilla, 3 strawberry)
• 1 quart of Valvoline automatic transmission fluid
• 1 Betsey Johnson Falsies false-eyelash kit
• 80 bags of Lyons Gold Blend black tea
• 4 ounces of Pacific Northwest–grown burdock root powder
• 36 Dixon Ticonderoga yellow No. 2 pencils (new, with defects)
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