Tesla’s Director of Autopilot Software Christopher ‘CJ’ Moore has reportedly left the company. The departure comes after Moore made mainstream media headlines earlier this year for a comment regarding the current state of Full Self-Driving (FSD).
In early March Tesla had a meeting with Miguel Acosta of the Autonomous Vehicles Branch of the California DMV to discuss the expansion of the FSD beta program to more testers.
During that meeting Moore was asked from an engineering perspective if CEO Elon Musk’s comments regarding Tesla being able to reach Level 5, or full autonomy, was accurate.
According to notes of the meeting, Moore responded by saying “Elon’s tweet does not match engineering reality.” Moore reportedly went on to add that they would need to see 1 or 2 million miles per driving interaction to move to higher levels of automation.
The media grabbed the quote and ran with it, despite the fact that Musk is well known to not always be the most accurate when it comes to timelines.
Now Moore has apparently left Tesla sometime since that meeting.
We have only learned now about his departure because of a lawsuit in Florida where the estate of man who died in a March 2019 accident while his Model S was on Autopilot is suing Tesla. The lawsuit began in 2020, and Moore was designated the corporate representative for the automaker.
Lawyers for the estate want to question Moore again, but according to a court filing dated October 7, 2021, he is no longer an employee. (via Bloomberg)
Moore’s nearly 7- year career with Tesla has always been with the Autopilot team. In 2014 he joined the company as a Senior Integration Engineer.
He worked his was up to Staff Integration Engineer in 2016, then Senior Staff Engineer and Senior Manager in 2019, before reaching his Director position in late 2019.
His exit from the company was likely recently, as his LinkedIn profile has not been updated to reflect he is no longer working for Tesla.
