  On October 14, 2015, Tesla Inc. an American electric car company, released
the initial version of the Autopilot system. This system promised to provide
semi-autonomous driving using the existing hardware already installed on Tesla
vehicles. On March 23rd, 2018, a Tesla vehicle ran into a divider at highway
speed, killing the driver. This occurred under the control of the Autopilot
system with no driver intervention. Critics argue that though Tesla gives
drivers warnings in its owner's manual, it is ultimately unethical to release a
system that is marketed as an Autopilot yet still makes grave mistakes that any
human driver would not make. Others defend Tesla by stating that their
advisories are suitable and that drivers should ultimately be at fault for any
mistakes of the Autopilot. This paper will scrutinize the ethical implications
of Tesla's choice to develop, market, and ship a beta product that requires
extensive testing. It will further analyze the implications of Tesla's
aggressive advertisement of the product under the name Autopilot along with
associated marketing materials. By applying the joint ACM/IEEE-CS Software
Engineering Code of Ethics, this paper will show that Tesla's choices and
actions during this event are inconsistent with the code and are unethical
since they are responsible for adequately testing and honestly marketing their
product.
