Elon Musk praises Indian-origin engineer who was first to join Tesla Autopilot team

Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, has publicly lauded Ashok Elluswamy, an Indian-origin engineer who played a pivotal role in developing Tesla's Autopilot technology. Elluswamy, the first engineer hired for Tesla's Autopilot team, shared his journey on social media platform X, highlighting Musk's significant influence and encouragement in pushing the boundaries of AI and autonomy at Tesla.

In his post, Elluswamy reminisced about the early days of the Autopilot project in 2014. He described the initial challenges, working with extremely limited computing resources—just about 384 KB of memory. Despite the skepticism within the team regarding Musk's ambitious goals for lane-keeping, lane-changing, and vehicle control, Musk's relentless drive motivated them to achieve these milestones.

By 2016, Tesla had decided to develop all the computer vision capabilities for Autopilot in-house, a task that other companies took over a decade to accomplish. Against all odds, the Tesla team managed to complete this within eleven months, a testament to their hard work and Musk's leadership.

Musk shared Elluswamy's post, expressing his gratitude and admiration. He credited Elluswamy and the AI/Autopilot team for their contributions, stating, "Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomous supplier that doesn't exist." Musk also clarified that he was unaware of Elluswamy's post until he saw it shortly before resharing it.

Thanks Ashok!

Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and ultimately rose to lead all AI/Autopilot software.

Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn’t exist.

Btw, I never… https://t.co/7eBfzu0Nci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2024