It turns out not even the people building Tesla’s self-driving tech trust Elon Musk’s extravagant claims about the company’s autonomous vehicles.

New reporting by Reuters interviewed nine former data labelers and a former self-driving engineer about their take on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode. The results were overwhelmingly negative, with seven of the data specialists admitting they wouldn’t ride in a Tesla in FSD.

“We have all seen it fail,” one Tesla insider told Reuters. “Definitely don’t trust Elon on this,” the self-driving engineer concurred, referencing Musks’ declaration that the the vehicles are ready for “safe unsupervised” rides.

One erstwhile worker told the publication they wouldn’t ride in a Tesla robotaxi “if you f**king paid me.”

At least five data labelers, whose job was to comb through hours of FSD footage to train the vehicle’s software to avoid past mistakes, told Reuters they routinely saw clips of Teslas driving above the speed limit, an issue which engineers and managers treated like a low-priority compared to edge-case issues.

Those glowing recommendations come amidst concerns that Tesla’s FSD mode may never be truly safe enough for public roads.

In recent months, Tesla operating on FSD move have driven riders into lakes, off bridges, and even into the path of oncoming trains — and those are just the incidents that get media exposure. Given these insiders’ direct access to terabytes’ worth of proprietary FSD footage, we’re inclined to take their word on it.

More on Tesla: Man Drives Cybertruck Into Lake to Test Elon Musk’s “Boat” Claims, and It Went About as Well as You’d Guess

The post Tesla Insiders Admit Self-Driving Is a Complete Disaster appeared first on Futurism.

Longtime Cybertruck watchers might remember a peculiar day back before the brutalist pickup was even released, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk randomly tweeted that the vehicle would function as a rudimentary flotation device.

“It will even float for a while,” he wrote at the time.

It wasn’t a one-off claim. Musk later boasted that the vehicle would be able to “traverse at least 100m [330 feet] of water as a boat.”

“Mostly just need to upgrade cabin door seals,” he claimed, writing at another point that the “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren’t too choppy.”

The Cybertruck finally did make it to market, where it’s suffered a seemingly endless parade of recalls, embarrassing incidents, and dismal sales figures.

Unsurprisingly, all Musk’s bluster about the truck serving as a makeshift schooner turned out to be flimflam. In fact, it quickly emerged that just getting wet in a car wash could brick the thing.

To muddy the waters further, the company ended up adding what it calls “Wade Mode” to the vehicles, which sets the truck’s ride height to the highest level, ostensibly so it can ford creeks and streams.

All that mixed messaging clearly got jumbled for a Texas man, though, who activated Wade Mode and drove his Cybertruck into a lake. Unsurprisingly, things didn’t go well for him.

“Yesterday, [Grapevine Police Department] and [Grapevine Fire Department] were dispatched to Grapevine Lake, where a Tesla Cybertruck was stranded in the water,” police in Grapevine, Texas, wrote on X-formerly-Twitter. “The driver drove into the lake to use the ‘Wade Mode’ feature when the vehicle became disabled.”

Not only is the man’s vehicle swamped — as the cops showed in an amazing attached photo — but he’s in legal trouble as well.

“The passengers abandoned the vehicle and the driver was arrested,” they wrote.

More on the Cybertruck: Cybertruck Recalled to Keep Its Wheels From Flying Off While Driving

The post Man Drives Cybertruck Into Lake to Test Elon Musk’s “Boat” Claims, and It Went About as Well as You’d Guess appeared first on Futurism.

Exclusive: Mining giant says technology is not yet advanced enough to run a fully electrified fleet but experts say it is hooked on federal fuel tax credits

• Revealed: the internal BHP memo that slammed the brakes on world’s biggest miner’s climate push

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

BHP has continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying diesel trucks in the Pilbara despite internal documents suggesting it would increase emissions and be “misaligned” with its decarbonisation goals.

The mining giant is Australia’s biggest consumer of diesel and trucks are its biggest single source of diesel emissions. Replacing the fleet with battery-electric trucks is considered a critical step in the multinational’s efforts to decarbonise.

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© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian

After driving the Cayenne Coupe Electric for a few days, Porsche continues to make a very convincing case for ditching the combustion engine.

Outrage as leaked documents reveal mining giant’s backsliding on commitments to slash emissions

• Adam Morton: Big Mining gets a $4bn tax break to use fossil fuel. It’s a strange way to tackle emissions

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The independent senator David Pocock says leaked BHP documents show that the mining giant is “laughing” at Australia’s key climate policy while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a generous diesel tax break.

An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to by the Guardian and the ABC show BHP has scrapped a project to significantly reduce global emissions, delayed vast renewables projects in the Pilbara and war-gamed options to push the electrification of its polluting diesel truck and train fleets into the next two decades.

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© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

© Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Exclusive: Cache of internal documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners show multinational has war-gamed ways to massively delay decarbonisation

• Revealed: the internal BHP memo that slammed the brakes on world’s biggest miner’s climate push

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The world’s biggest miner has halted or delayed projects to cut vast amounts of emissions and has quietly war-gamed options to push major climate investments in its Western Australian iron ore operations into the next two decades, internal documents show.

An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners can reveal that BHP, one of Australia’s biggest historic emitters, has dumped plans for a facility that could have significantly reduced emissions and has put on ice renewable projects designed to power its iron ore operations in the vast, resource-rich Pilbara region.

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© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design

Exclusive: BHP once dubbed climate change an ‘existential’ threat. But leaked documents show it has backtracked on decarbonisation at a vast network of mines

• Read more from the BHP files investigation here

In the middle of 2019, London was sweltering through a heatwave.

Temperature records tumbled. Frail, ill and elderly people died in their hundreds.

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© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian

© Composite: Guardian