A Tesla logo on a Model S is photographed at a Tesla dealership in New York.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday tweeted a denial that his company’s automated driving systems were involved in a fatal crash in Spring, Texas.
Two federal agencies, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, are now investigating the crash.
Local police said in several personal interviews that there was apparently no one behind the wheel of the Tesla Model S in 2019 when it turned off the road, hit a tree and burst into flames, according to their preliminary investigations.
Musk wrote in his tweet on Monday: “Data loggers recovered so far show that Autopilot was not activated and that this car did not buy FSD. In addition, standard Autopilot would need track tracks to turn on, which this street did not have. do not have.”
Tesla sells its automated driving systems under the brand names Monopilot and Full Self-Driving, or FSD. It also releases a “beta” version of FSD software to some customers who have the premium FSD option, which costs $ 10,000.
Tesla Autopilot and FSD are unable to control the electric vehicles in all normal driving conditions, and the company’s user manuals warn drivers to use them only with ‘active supervision’.
Autopilot, which is now standard in Tesla vehicles, does not always identify track marks – it can confuse sealed cracks in the road or cycle lanes with other track marks, for example.
The system can also be abused or misused by drivers. A teen driver recently showed in a stunt video he shared on social media that he can leave the driver’s seat with his Tesla’s Autopilot system in use.