Tesla engineers are reportedly jumping ship because they don’t believe Autopilot 2.0 hardware can meet the fully self-driving promise that Elon Musk proudly touts.
The Wall Street Journal says Sterling Anderson, previously the Autopilot director, decided to leave Tesla in December in part because he didn’t agree with the claims Musk was making about the vehicle’s potential for full autonomy.
According to the WSJ (paywall):
In a meeting after the announcement, someone asked Autopilot director Sterling Anderson how Tesla could brand the product “Full Self-Driving,” several employees recall. “This was Elon’s decision,” they said he responded. Two months later, Mr. Anderson resigned.
The Autopilot division has lost some 10 employees and four managers recently, according to the report. Satish Jeyachandran, the former director of hardware engineering for Tesla’s Autopilot team, and Berta Rodriguez-Hervas, a former machine learning manager also left the company in June. Anderson was succeeded by Chris Lattner, a former Apple developer, but he left in June after just six months on the job.
Tesla has declined to comment on the report.