Meet Indian-origin Ashok Elluswamy, Elon Musk's first recruit for Tesla Autopilot team

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, who has been using social media to recruit people, has disclosed that Indian-origin Ashok Elluswamy was the first employee to be hired for his electric vehicle company’s Autopilot team.

“Ashok was the first person recruited from my tweet saying that Tesla is starting an Autopilot team!” Musk said in a tweet in reply to a video of his interview.

He said that Ashok is actually the head of Autopilot engineering.

“Andrej is director of AI; People often give me too much credit and give Andrej too much credit. The Tesla Autopilot AI team is extremely talented. Some of the smartest people in the world,” he said.

Who is Ashok Elluswamy

Ashok Elluswamy is a software engineer associated with Tesla for over eight years.

He joined Telsa as a Software Engineer for its Autopilot division in January 2014 and developed various modules such as velocity planning and control, automatic lane change, etc. for the first generation Autopilot.

Two years down the line, he rose up the ranks to become a Senior Software Engineer in the same division in June 2016.

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In September 2017, Elluswamy got another promotion and went onto become the senior Staff Software Engineer, a post he held till April 2019.

He was appointed as the Director of the Autopilot Software in May 2019.

Before joining Tesla, Elluswamy was associated with Volkswagen Electronic Research Lab and WABCO Vehicle Control System, according to a PTI report.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the College of Engineering Guindy, Chennai and a Master's degree in Robotics System Development from Carnegie Mellon University.

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