How Tesla lost a critical year trying to make its autopilot work

The legacy of over-promising and under-delivering has already besmirched the company's success as an e-car maker

A year ago, Tesla had set up a hastily organised conference call between  Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and reporters. Tesla had something big to announce — big enough for the chief executive to open the floor to questions. That doesn’t happen very often. What followed wasn’t so much the unveiling of a new product as a plan for a product. Tesla’s driver-assistance platform, Autopilot, was about to begin a transformation to fully autonomous driving. Every Tesla would come with eight cameras, radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and a Nvidia supercomputer. Once testing and regulatory approval were complete, Musk said, the car