Actually Audi is taking responsibility if the car crashes
Audi to take full responsibility in event of autonomous vehicle crash | CarAdvice
Interesting, one could make the argument that this strategy from Audi is irresponsible. It could have the effect of downplaying the importance of monitoring an Audi car because, hey, Audi is going to pay for it if it wrecks! I am kind of joking but not really.
Or perhaps this just means Audi will result in much more intrusion and limitations of being able to activate self-driving features.....
Either way, this is most likely careful PR and branding by Audi (something Tesla has struggled with at times).... I imagine Audi will defend itself legally in a different way than what they insinuate in that article..... And once they have real skin in the game, and owners start blaming Audi for things that were not the fault of the system, you will see a clarification of the "full responsibility" statement from Audi.
I imagine Audi will likely take full responsibility for only it's aspect of the code. Tesla has considered that approach, but they decided on a better idea, which is to call it beta and use at your own risk.... which I think is the way to go.
The perception that Tesla throws its owners under the bus after a software malfunction is not accurate They defend themselves publicly when an owner makes inconsistent accusations regarding their software.
It's been interesting to see the situations where an owner may think they have hit the jackpot with Tesla by ramming it into a brick wall, only to have Tesla say, hmmmmm let's look at that... in slow motion... and see when you touched the wheel, etc.