Since 2019, Ashok Elluswamy, a San Francisco resident, has served as the Director of Tesla Autopilot Software.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, recognized Indian-origin engineer Ashok Elluswamy for his crucial contribution to the development of Tesla’s Autopilot system. In a social media post on Sunday, Musk emphasized Mr. Elluswamy’s contributions to the project.
“Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn’t exist,” Musk said, praising him and the AI/Autopilot team for their accomplishments.
Ashok Elluswamy: Who is he?
Since 2019, Ashok Elluswamy, a San Francisco resident, has served as the Director of Tesla Autopilot Software. After earning his master’s degree in robotic systems development from Carnegie Mellon University, the robotics engineer became the first member of the Tesla AI/Autopilot team in 2014 and went on to oversee the entire AI/Autopilot software team.
Ashok graduated from the College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communication. He was employed at WABCO Vehicle Control Systems as a software engineer before joining Tesla. According to his LinkedIn page, he also enlisted as a research intern at Volkswagen Electronic Research Lab, where he worked on a project that was a part of the Volkswagen autonomous driving team.
Ashok described his experience with Tesla in a post on the social networking platform X that Musk reposted. He talked about how the business shipped the first Autopilot system ever in 2015 and how Musk played a crucial part in its development.
“If not for Elon’s ambition, Tesla might have dwindled to become just another car company. It is his(Elon Musk) combination of deep technical understanding, insane perseverance, and relentless hard work that have positioned Tesla to be a leader in real-world AI,” Ashok wrote.
