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Tesla Autopilot ‘easily tricked’ by Consumer Reports in bizarre test
Consumer Reports claims to have shown that Tesla Autopilot can be “easily tricked” into driving without anyone in the driver’s seat. The test process was extremely bizarre and required certain items that most drivers would never have in their vehicles.
CR released a report on April 22nd entitled, “CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver’s Seat.” The test was in response to the recent and very public Tesla Model S crash in Texas, where two men, unfortunately, passed away after their all-electric sedan crashed violently into a tree at a high speed. Investigators are attempting to determine whether the vehicle was “driverless,” a claim made by several mainstream media outlets. CEO Elon Musk chimed in just days after the crash and the very public coverage of it to say that it would be impossible for Autopilot to function on the road where the crash occurred due to the lack of road lines, which are required to initiate the use of Basic Autopilot.
Tesla alleged “driverless” crash in Texas: What is known so far
The CR test required the vehicle, a Tesla Model Y, to be in motion, and engineers then engaged Autopilot and set the speed dial to 0, which brought the car to a stop. Next, Jake Fisher, CR’s Senior Director of Auto Testing, placed a “small, weighted chain on the steering wheel, to simulate the weight of a driver’s hand, and slid over into the front passenger seat without opening any of the vehicle’s doors, because that would disengage Autopilot.” The Autopilot speed was then adjusted so that the vehicle would accelerate from its stationary position. The car managed to drive up and down the half-mile lane of the CR test track, although nobody was in the seat or controlling the vehicle. “It was a bit frightening when we realized how easy it was to defeat the safeguards, which we proved were clearly insufficient,” Fisher said. The engineers encouraged nobody to try the experiment at home, but who will have a custom weighted chain sitting around to experiment with anyway?
“In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn’t tell if there was a driver there at all,” Fisher added, but he wasn’t done throwing shade at Tesla. “Tesla is falling behind other automakers like GM and Ford that, on models with advanced driver assist systems, use technology to make sure the driver is looking at the road.” GM’s SuperCruise and Ford’s recently released BlueCruise are what Fisher is referencing, but the comparisons don’t really add up.
Tesla Autopilot has over 23 billion real-world miles of data that is stored in a Neural Network to improve performance. With every mile driven, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving functionalities become more robust, more precise, and more adaptable to human behavior. Ford and GM have accumulated only a fraction of these statistics. Tesla, meanwhile, recently reported its Q1 2021 Safety Report, where it found that Autopilot is nearly 10 times safer than human driving.
Tesla’s Q1 2021 accident data shows Autopilot is closing in on being 10X safer than humans
The test performed by CR is extremely bizarre because people would not normally have all of these things in their vehicle or even in their possession, to begin with. Tesla maintains that drivers are responsible for remaining attentive during the entirety of their driving experience. The company has never claimed to have released a program capable of Level 5 autonomy where a driver needs to pay no attention to the road or the vehicle’s surroundings. Yet, Tesla’s very-publicized crash raises questions from those who have a historical distaste for the company and its products. Consumer Reports has not been keen on Tesla in the past. They have indicated that GM’s SuperCruise, despite being less effective or safe than Autopilot based on data, holds a commanding lead over Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving program.
It is worth noting that Tesla has several safety thresholds that would prohibit anyone from attempting to let the vehicle drive itself. These include a steering wheel monitoring system, which will bring the car to a complete stop if the driver is not holding it. The system also requires a driver to be in the seat to function, and the company recently revoked FSD software from several drivers who were abusing the program by being inattentive. More safety features, like a facial features recognition camera, will monitor the driver’s eyes and face to ensure they are paying attention to the road.
What are your thoughts on the CR study? Let us know in the comments, or let me know at @KlenderJoey on Twitter. You can email me at joey@teslarati.com as well.
Tesla has revealed plans through permit submissions for a massive Robotaxi charging hub in Austin, Texas.
Tesla plans to build the Supercharger hub in multiple phases, with the second phase potentially introducing wireless induction charging, something the company has been developing for the Robotaxi fleet.
Initially, 48 Tesla Robotaxi-geared Superchargers will be built on a lot just across from the St. Elmo, Texas, Service Center. There are about 80 additional spots that will not be impacted by phase 1 of the construction process.
Filings show that the second phase of the project will turn those 80 additional spots into wireless charging for Robotaxi, but it might be an error. The Key Notes state that item 3 is listed as “V4 Charging Cabinet to Support 80 Wireless Chargers in Phase 2. However, the drawings point to V3 Cabinets that are already tied to Superchargers:
There are roughly 128 total spots in the lot, but it is unclear if they will all be used for charging based on what appears to be some sort of typo in the blueprint.
A new Robotaxi fleet charging hub is coming soon to Austin, Texas!!
Permits have been filed for the installation of 48 (V3) stalls in a vehicle storage lot across the road from Tesla’s St Elmo service center. pic.twitter.com/xwRgSWDqht
— MarcoRP (@MarcoRPi1) August 18, 2026
This is among the first Robotaxi charging hubs Tesla has started to develop, as it currently has four others planned throughout various areas: one in Phoenix, one in San Antonio, another in Irving, which will serve the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and another in Las Vegas.
These projects are necessary as Tesla expands its Robotaxi program. Now that preparations have started for the public launch of Cybercab, Robotaxi will likely be expanding aggressively, especially over the next two to three years.
Last night, The Information reported that Tesla was planning to launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Hours later, Tesla then announced it was launching a competition for fans to potentially ride in Cybercab during its first public rides.
Tesla’s plan to expand its charging infrastructure in the regions where Robotaxi will initially operate is great preparation for the expanding service. There is still a lot to do, including launching the Cybercab on time.
Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Tesla reveals plans for Robotaxi charging hub in Austin
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
