Who Is Ashok Elluswamy, Without Whom Elon Musk Says Tesla Would ‘Just Be Another Car Company’?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday thanked Ashok Elluswamy for his contributions to the electric automaker’s AI/Autopilot software, since its inception. He highlighted that Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and then went on to lead it.

Musk thanked Elluswamy and said he was crucial for the development of the tech that has made self-driving cars possible.

“Thanks Ashok! Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn’t exist,” Musk wrote praising the engineer who was also described by one of his professors as one of the “top students”.

Musk was responding to a post by Ashok Elluswamy on X, the social media platform owned by his boss. He wrote an article where he highlighted Elon Musk’s contributions to Tesla’s growth and how he drove AI and autonomy at automaker’s for which the company rose to such heights.

Earlier, Elluswamy had also praised Elon Musk in the article and gave a similar compliment, saying that without the billionaire’s ‘ambition’, Tesla would ‘become just another car company’.

“Elon is critical for Tesla’s success in AI. It is his combination of deep technical understanding, insane perseverance and relentless hard work that have positioned Tesla to be a leader in real-world AI. Elon’s technical intuition to make these important decisions way before others see it is unmatched. If not for Elon’s ambition, Tesla might have dwindled to become just another car company,” Elluswamy had written.

The robotics engineer, who holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from the College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai, thanked Elon Musk for pushing him and people at Tesla ‘to achieve great things, even when such ideas were seemingly impossible at the time’.

Ashok Elluswamy, who also holds a Master of Science in Robotic Systems Development from Carnegie Mellon University, said that Elon Musk’s requests to the engineering team “to implement lane keeping, lane changing, longitudinal control for vehicles” seemed crazy but said he pushed everyone to achieve those targets which in turn allowed them to roll out world’s first Autopilot system in 2015 ‘against all odds’.

Elluswamy, who describes himself as an engineer with vast experience in computer vision and perception, as well as planning and control, has worked with Tesla for over 10 years and previously worked as a software engineer at WABCO Vehicle Control Systems for over two years and later as a research intern at the Volkswagen Electronic Research Lab. He lives in San Francisco with his family.