Ashok Elluswamy

He earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering at the College of Engineering, Guindy, and a master’s in robotic systems development at Carnegie Mellon University.⁠[1]

He also worked at WABCO and Volkswagen Electronic Research Lab.⁠[1]

In May 2019, Elluswamy was promoted to director of Autopilot Software at Tesla.⁠[1]

Business Insider reported that he oversaw FSD’s public rollout in the United States in 2022.⁠[2]

ReutersReutersReuters is an international news agency founded in London in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter and is now the news business of Thomson Reuters. It provides text, photo, video, and graphics coverage to media and institutional clients and distributes it through channels such as Reuters Connect.Open the full entry reported in 2023 that, in testimony for the Walter Huang case, Elluswamy described a premapped route and driver interventions during tests for a 2016 demonstration. He said the video portrayed possible future capabilities rather than features then available to customers.⁠[3]

On June 18, 2023, he presented “Building Foundation models for Autonomy” at the CVPR Workshop on Autonomous Driving in Vancouver. The official program scheduled the talk for 17:00–17:30.⁠[4]

On April 8, 2024, Reuters reported, citing court documents, that Tesla settled with Walter Huang’s family on undisclosed terms. The family alleged that Autopilot steered the vehicle into a barrier; Tesla argued that the driver had misused the system.⁠[5]

In October 2024, he became Tesla’s vice president of AI Software.⁠[6]

Business Insider reported in October 2025, citing people familiar with the changes, that he had helped lead Optimus since that summer after Milan Kovac’s departure. Some AI chip engineers also began reporting to him in August.⁠[2]

At an NVIDIA GTC panel, he advocated one model that turns video into real-time actions for cars or robots, emphasizing data selection and evaluation. He also argued that physical simulation must be grounded in real data rather than merely generate apparently successful outcomes.⁠[7]

On June 3, 2026, he presented “Building Foundational Models for Robotics at Tesla” at the CVPR autonomous driving workshop in Denver, scheduled for 15:30–16:00.⁠[8]

In a discussion summary published by ICONS on August 24, 2026, he described reliable evaluation as a major robotics bottleneck, arguing that model objectives and reward design matter alongside data scale.⁠[9]

He also discussed the limits of onboard inference compute and the difficulty of simulating subjective objectives such as braking comfort, compared with more readily measurable collision costs.⁠[9]

Tesla describes its autonomy work as spanning perception, trajectory planning, control and evaluation, while Optimus involves balance, navigation and physical interaction. These are company research areas rather than accomplishments attributed solely to Elluswamy.⁠[10]

College of Engineering, Guindy: Official website: https://ceg.annauniv.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

Carnegie Mellon University: Official website: https://www.cmu.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

WABCO: Official website: https://www.zf.com/products/en/cv/emea/home/cv.html (opens in a new window)⁠[13]

Volkswagen Electronic Research Lab (group website): Official website: https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

Tesla: Official website: https://www.tesla.com/ai (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

X public account: Official account: https://x.com/aelluswamy (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry public account: Official account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eashokkumar/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]