In the spring of 2016, Joshua Brown died at the wheel of his car, even though he wasn’t driving. It is believed to be the first fatality aboard a Tesla. Addicted to new technologies and strong emotions, he posted the virtues of his Tesla Model S on his YouTube channel and Elon Musk himself, at the helm of the company, shared and viralized his videos on social networks just before the fatal crash.
Elon Musk’s Accident is a new documentary in The New York Times Presents series that explores the entrepreneur and his company’s quest to sell the world a fully autonomous car before they can build it. This production, which can be seen on AMC Break, does not attempt to create a biography of such a media-oriented American, who has been making headlines and social media news daily for his innovative technology – Tesla cars, space exploration – and , in recent weeks, for his desire to acquire Twitter. Focusing on a very specific moment in his public career, the documentary takes a look at Musk’s self-driving technology and the efforts he’s putting into Tesla’s future.
For Emma Schwartz, director of this feature film, looking at the details helped to observe in perspective what is happening around the entrepreneur. “When there is so much information about something or someone, that situation arises where the trees don’t let us see the forest. So we force ourselves to take a step back to observe the influence of a powerful and wealthy man involved in many different industries and companies. There are certain behavioral patterns that can go unnoticed in everyday surveillance,” says the journalist from Washington in the telematics interview.
Emma Schwartz, director of the documentary.AMC
The research led by Schwartz underscores the otherworldly nature of the entrepreneurial dream, which has a passionate following around the world. Attempting to create autonomous driving technologies has resulted in many broken promises and multiple tragedies so far. Autopilot has been the trigger for several deaths and dozens of accidents where Tesla has not been fully transparent, this production defends. “As a company that has gone public, there is a lot of information about Tesla that is public, but these types of companies know how to hide certain information. Tesla regularly offers data to the US government about the safety of its vehicles and sticks to it even when challenged by the federal agency without questioning anything. You can’t help but wonder why.”
The businessman has repeatedly refused to take part in the documentary, explains the director. To piece the story together, the newspaper’s investigative team contacted dozens of people, including Tesla employees, who had worked closely with the billionaire. Some of them gave their testimony in front of the camera, others preferred to remain anonymous in front of the audience. “We built a story without working with its protagonist, and the hardest part was finding voices around them that would talk about what was happening. The fear of retaliation was great,” explains Schwartz. These former employees often say that Tesla is a very personal project of Musk, who is sometimes solely responsible for making some of the most important decisions for the company. Close friends of Joshua Brown, in addition to Cade Metz, editor of the paper’s technology department, and several Tesla motorists complete the testimonies that appear in the final montage.
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Elon Musk’s accident unveils the collected material in a clear and chronological manner. For 70 minutes, he reveals the contradictory statements his protagonist has made over the years. The upcoming advances that Tesla keeps announcing on social media and public interventions are attracting media and investor attention. But they don’t come on the promised date. In many cases, they never arrive because, like some of the engineers who helped make these cars, the technology isn’t advanced enough for a machine to be able to drive safely on the road instead of humans. Many Tesla fans and customers believe their cars are far more autonomous than they really are.
In one wave of his variant speech, in an interview with The New York Times, he acknowledged that he tends to address more than he can cover. Because of this, what Musk often tells about Tesla’s advances sounds like pure science fiction to his own engineers, as they say in this film. “There’s a head-on collision between their vision and the reality of what the technology can offer,” concludes Schwartz.
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