Tesla was in the news again this week for a particularly strange and unexpected reason. Last week, an adult entertainer and her boyfriend filmed various sex acts together in a moving Tesla while it was driving on auto-pilot. Now, Tesla CEO and (potentially mad) genius Elon Musk has weighed in on the story.
Taylor Jackson, an adult performer based in Los Angeles, utilised the Tesla's autopilot system while they filmed, and later uploaded it to PornHub. "Holy s---, I made @Tesla the #1 search on Pornhub," Jackson later posted to her NSFW Twitter, tagging in Musk.
The Autopilot system isn't actually entirely driverless yet, and their website suggests that drivers should keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times in case they need to take over. However, Jackson said she wasn't worried even though she knocks the car out of Autopilot mode at one point in the video.
"It was mainly a straight road, but it had a lot of traffic," she told Insider. "We had a lot of cars driving by us."
"We joked around when we were done and thought that would make a great porno. We looked it up on PornHub because we thought someone had to have done it, and we couldn't find anything."
The PornHub Instagram account later posted a (technically safe for work) screenshot from the video, adding the caption: "Reporting you to Elon for not having two hands on the wheel with autopilot enabled."
While Tesla hasn't commented publicly on the video yet, Elon Musk has come forward to address the incident. "Turns out there's more ways to use Autopilot than we imagined," and added "shoulda seen it coming …"
One of his followers replied to say "Tesla is S3XY after all," to which Musk said: "Basically begging for it."
Another asked whether there were still plans in motion to make the drive from New York City to Los Angeles on Autopilot, to which Musk joked it'd have "a different age rating" now, before answering more seriously confirmed they were still planning on the journey.
On a more serious note, Tesla are still involved in a legal dispute about the driverless feature, with its safety being called into question. Walter Huang, an Apple engineer, died in March last year when his Tesla Model X crashed on a highway in California.
His family is currently suing the company due to the fact it was on Autopilot at the time of the crash. They allege that the driverless feature is "defective in its design," though Tesla responded to state that Huang "received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive," to remind him to put his hands back on the wheel.
According to Musk, Tesla's Autopilot system won't just be complete and safe-to-use by the end of this year, but will allow the public to drive hands-free by the end of 2019.