The National Traffic Highway Safety Administration reported – in its data from the fatal Autopilot crash investigation – that the addition of Autosteer dropped Tesla's crash rate from 1.3 crashes per million miles, to 0.8 crashes per million miles. Musk's new claim forecasts 0.1 to be the new figure, once HW2 matures.

After yesterday's announcement, critics were skeptical, pointing out the fact that Autosteer was specified in the reference, rather than Autopilot as a whole. Bear in mind that Autosteer is the main factor which makes Autopilot function as it does. Also, the NHTSA only uses the Autosteer addition as a reference for the date in October of 2015, when the feature was added as an option. All other features of Autopilot were, and still are, working to make these numbers possible, prior to and since that target date.

Another point to consider is that Autosteer must be initiated by the user, for a fee, and the data doesn't account for whether or not it was actually turned on. However, the collision warnings and emergency braking features are automatically engaged.