Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke with “CNN This Morning” Tuesday when he offered some off-hand commentary on Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s Autopilot struggles.
When asked if the tech guru ever speaks to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Wozniak said he’d never met Musk but that he admires some of the things Musk has done for the world. However, he said much of those achievements get overshadowed by other things like the many instances over the years that Musk has been accused of vastly overstating the capabilities of Tesla’s driver assistance system.
The Apple cofounder first bought a Model S after he claimed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk reprimanded him in an email exchange for buying a gas guzzler in 2013.
He basically got a lot of money from myself for a car, I believed things he said. That a car would drive itself across the country by the end of 2016. Oh, I had to upgrade to that model. You know, $50,000 and then it wouldn’t do anything,” Wozniak said.
“I could tell it would never make it across the country, and he said ‘Here we have a new one with eight cameras, it’ll make across the country by the end of 2017,’” Wozniak said.
“I actually believed those things, and it’s not even close to reality,” he said. “And boy, if you want a study of AI gone wrong and taking a lot of claims and trying to kill you every chance it can, get a Tesla.”
Wozniak later bought a Chevy Bolt EV and started a debate about considering making it his daily driver, replacing his Tesla. Yet he ended up buying a second Model S after Tesla released Autopilot 2.0., which the engineer continues to be critical of over the years.
Shares of TSLA and AAPL are up 1.93% and 0.64% in afternoon trading on Wednesday.