Tesla Full Self-Driving software has many controversies and supporters, and sometimes as how Mr. Vivek Wadhwa said. Wadhwa is an Indian-American entrepreneur and author who is known to be a “Tesla fanboy”. Over the years, his supposed was known as a supporter, as a Washington Post Columnist, and an academic with stints at Harvard University, Standford, and Carnegie Mellon.
He now stated to Insider, that his support is not so strong as he is using the Tesla FSD software. Two incidents seem to have caught the entrepreneur’s eye and led to some further thinking. Wadhwa first met Elon Musk in an interview in 2013. The two had a chance to talk off-camera too and Musk told Wadhwa of his plans to retire on Mars. Wadhwa said he was impressed by Musk and continued speaking to him in the following years. He took Musk’s side in opinion pieces, and the Tesla boss endorsed his book. “I used to call him a friend,” Wadhwa told Insider. “Maybe he wouldn’t call me one, but I did. I will always call him the greatest innovator of our time.” But he’s more cautious now, after at least two incidents with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode (FSD), which has been in focus because of safety concerns.
Experience with Tesla FSD
Wadhwa told Insider he was one of the first buyers of the Tesla Model S. Later, he sold it to get a new car to avail of the Full Self-Driving feature. One day, he said, his Tesla crashed into his garage when he used the Summon mode. In another instance, the car almost crashed on a road. “It really shook me up,” Wadhwa said. “If I hadn’t slammed on the brakes, that might have been the first filmed Autopilot crash.”
Wadhwa clarified that his complaint was only about FSD and he still considered Tesla to be a “beautiful” car. But will he buy it again? Certainly not. “I didn’t get the Full Self-Driving that I was promised,” Wadhwa said, adding that he felt duped. “It’s still a beautiful car. But, my next car will not be a Tesla. There’s no way.” Not just that, Wadhwa said if there is a class-action lawsuit over FSD mode, he will join it immediately. He also wants a refund of $15,000, the amount he spent on the technology. Recently, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also called out Tesla and Musk for “misleading” buyers. Wozniak told CNBC he had spent huge amounts of money on self-driving technology since 2016. “They have robbed my family—myself and my wife—of so much money I couldn’t tell you, with things they said that we really believed would be real,” Wozniak said. “A lot of honesty disappears when you look at Elon Musk and Tesla.”
