Breaking Tesla News Includes 1st Commercial, Employee Law Suit, Another Autopilot Crash

The weekly Tesla News From Alex Guberman, three-time Tesla owner, and founder of the Tesla Model S Club on Facebook, includes some important updates. This week, Alex talks about an Autopilot-related crash, an employee lawsuit, and Tesla deciding that advertising is not evil after all.

First up, a Tesla Model S reportedly being driven with Autopilot engaged didn't seem to notice a temporary barrier on a highway and failed to merge. That is technical talk for it drove straight into a wall (video shows the crash). Like in other cases where the Tesla system fails to prevent a crash, Tesla and its fans again point out that this whole "self-driving" feature is not really self-driving, but rather, you are supposed to be ready in an instant to retake control. That is of course, absolutely ridiculous, and industry experts such as Dr. Gill Pratt, former DARPA team leader and a top dog of autonomous driving at Toyota's MIT/Stanford think tank has said so on many occasions. Luckily the impact was into a barrier and not a construction vehicle carrying workers.

The second bit of weekly news relates to an employee lawsuit. Watch the video for details, but when you hear of a female employee suing for discrimination and the entire senior management team of the company (Tesla) is male, perhaps it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand?

Elon Musk has mentioned on many occasions how proud he is that Tesla does not run commercials. Apparently, he has changed his mind. The word is the first one will involve owners telling their stories. Sort of like Toyota's long-running, "Ask someone you know who drives one. " Which itself was a take-off on a Packard advertisement.

The last bit of news this week is that Tesla stock lost ground for the second straight week. Buying opportunity?