Another fatal Tesla crash on Autopilot goes to trial, but with new evidence this time
Another fatal crash on Tesla Autopilot is going to trial, and while Tesla has won all of them in the past, this one has new evidence that could help the plaintiffs.
Over the years, there have been a handful of fatal crashes involving Tesla’s Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) features, more commonly referred to as their brand names: Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) Package.
The families of the victims have taken the accidents to trials for wrongful death at times, but Tesla always won.
That’s because, in virtually all cases, Tesla was able to show that the driver was not paying attention at the moment of the accident or leading up to it. When using Autopilot or FSD Beta, Tesla tells drivers that they need to pay attention at all times and to be ready to take control at all times.
If drivers are not doing that, they are misusing the system.
However, some have argued that Tesla should take more responsibility for creating an exaggerated level of confidence in its ADAS systems and to limit the misuse by better ensuring that drivers are paying attention.
Now, a new trial is about to take place, and the lawyers of the family of the deceased Tesla driver have uncovered evidence that they claim shows Tesla knew it was too easy to abuse Autopilot.
The trial is about one of the most publicized Tesla Autopilot accidents. We reported on it extensively when it first happened and in follow-ups regarding several investigations of the crash.
The Tesla Autopilot Crash
The crash occurred in March 2018 and involved Apple engineer Walter Huang.
Huang was driving his Model X on Autopilot when it entered the median of a ramp on the highway as if it were a lane, a common problem with Tesla’s Autopilot at the time. About 150 meters after entering the median, it hit a barrier.
The impact was quite severe because there was no crash attenuator since it was already destroyed by a previous crash. The driver was rushed to the hospital, but he died of his injuries.
NHTSA investigated the accident and confirmed that the vehicle was using Autopilot at the time of the crash. However, according to phone data, it blamed the driver, who was playing a video game on his phone, and the lack of a crash attenuator, which affected the severity of the crash.
The Trial
The family has sued Tesla for wrongful death, and it is going to be quite an uphill battle for them because it looks like he was using his phone while driving, which is a traffic violation and against Tesla’s guidance on how to use Autopilot.
That said, the family’s lawyers benefit from learning from previous similar trials and they are taking a different approach. They are not denying Huang’s misuse of Autopilot, but they are focusing on Tesla’s communications, which they claim led to the driver misusing Autopilot.
As we previously reported, as part of the discovery process for the trial, the family’s lawyers have focused on several statements made by Tesla, and specifically Elon Musk, about Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving efforts that could lead drivers to be overconfident in the systems.
In its defense, Tesla went as far as bizarrely claiming that some of Musk’s comments on the matter might have been deep fakes without specifying which ones.
The trial is now set to start next week in a San Jose court and more pieces of evidences are coming out as the court determines what they will be able to show to the jury.
Reuters report on an email that Jon McNeil, then Tesla’s president, sent to CEO Elon Musk and Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s head of Autopilot at the time, in which McNeil admitted to reading emails while using Autopilot:
“I got so comfortable under Autopilot, that I ended up blowing by exits because I was immersed in emails or calls (I know, I know, not a recommended use),.”
The lawyers are also arguing that Tesla never never “studied how quickly and effectively drivers could take control if Autopilot accidentally steers towards an obsacle,” based on Tesla witnesses and experts.
It sounds like the trial is going to revolve around what Tesla communicated to owners and what it has done internally to ensure owners use its systems safely.
But it will also focus on the fact that after the accident, Tesla has taken more steps to ensure driver attention, including introducing driver monitoring through its cabin-facing camera and more recently, it even had a recall to increase driver alerts to pay more attention when using Autopilot and FSD Beta.
The fact that Tesla had a recall recently over the issue could play a big role in this trial as it wasn’t the case in the previous ones won by the automaker.
Electrek’s Take
When cases involve a death, it’s always a sensitive matter, and the Tesla community is quick to put all the blame on the drivers.
That’s especially easy to do when the driver was using his phone at the moment of the crash, which is not legal, and he had seemingly more than a few seconds to react when the Autopilot made a mistake and went into the median.
That said, I think it is reasonable to explore, at least, the possibility that Tesla has contributed to the misuse of its own ADAS system.
We can’t deny that misuse was, and maybe still is, fairly common among Tesla owners at the time of this crash. We even reported on Elon Musk’s own wife at the time posting videos of her misusing Autopilot on her Instagram.
Now, on a legal basis, I don’t know how valuable this argument is, but it sounds like some experts think there’s a case.
Matthew Wansley, a Cardozo law school associate professor, agrees that Tesla had an obligation to prevent “foreseeable misuse”:
“If it was reasonably foreseeable to Tesla that someone would misuse the system, Tesla had an obligation to design the system in a way that prevented foreseeable misuse.”
Either way, I think it can’t hurt to debate the issue, especially if it helps publicize the fact that Tesla drivers need to pay attention at all times when using Tesla’s ADAS systems.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway