Have Faith In Autopilot Despite Tesla (TSLA) Issues, Vanity Fair's Bilton Tells CNBC

Despite recent car accidents linked to Tesla's (TSLA) autopilot, driver-less cars are still safer than humans, Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton told CNBC's Jon Fortt today.
By Lindsay Rittenhouse ,

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- People should trust driver-less cars over themselves despite the recent connection linking Tesla Motors (TSLA) - Get Report  autopilot to two separate car accidents, one of them fatal, Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton told CNBC's Jon Fortt on "Squawk Alley" Friday.

"I feel like most of us are not pilots, when we hear autopilot we think this thing drives itself and yet Tesla is saying, keep your hands on the wheel at all times, pay complete attention. Do they maybe need to tweak the way they're selling this or is the problem that people just don't appreciate how safe this is and that there is going to be the occasional problem?" Fortt asked.

"Yes. That's my answer. It's both," Bilton replied.

On one side, Tesla should reconsider changing the system's name from autopilot to "maybe auto assist...cruise control actually when it was invented decades ago was called autopilot and then they changed the name to cruise control because of confusion in the same respect," he said.

However, 94% of the about 33,000 annual car accidents in America are a "result of human error." Autopilot is "trying to fix that" and has performed better than people in the time period it has been in use, Bilton noted.

The autopilot systems "collectively" work together to learn from accidents and mistakes behind the wheel, he continued.

"With humans you may have learned to stop at stop signs because you hit someone once. I haven't learned that yet. So we all have to learn individually," Bilton explained.

Shares of Tesla are declining by 0.48% to $214.91 this afternoon.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings rated Tesla as a "sell" with a score if D+.

This is driven by some weaknesses, which can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: TSLA

TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

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