Tesla settles case over fatal Autopilot crash of Apple engineer
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[April 09, 2024] By
Abhirup Roy and Aditya Soni
(Reuters) -Tesla has settled a lawsuit over a 2018 car crash that killed
an Apple engineer after his Model X, operating on Autopilot, swerved off
a highway near San Francisco, court documents showed on Monday.
The settlement was made on the eve of the trial over the high-profile
accident involving Tesla's driver-assistant technology. Tesla faces a
series of lawsuits over crashes related to the alleged use of Autopilot,
putting the automaker at risk of large monetary judgments and
reputational damage.
The settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed, came as Chief
Executive Elon Musk is making major promotions of self-driving
technology, which he has touted as key to the financial future of the
world's most valuable automaker.
The 2018 accident killed 38-year-old Walter Huang. His family had
alleged that Autopilot steered his 2017 Model X into a highway barrier.
Plaintiffs' lawyers asked a Tesla witness whether the company knew
drivers would not watch the road when using its driver-assistance
system, Reuters reported last month citing deposition transcripts.
Tesla had contended that Huang misused the Autopilot system because he
was playing a video game just before the accident.
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Huang's lawyer and Tesla were not available for comment.
The crash that killed Huang is among hundreds of U.S. accidents in which
Autopilot was a suspected factor in reports to auto safety regulators.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has examined at
least 956 crashes in which Autopilot was initially reported to have been
in use. The agency separately launched more than 40 investigations into
accidents involving Tesla automated-driving systems that resulted in 23
deaths.
"It is striking to me that Tesla decided to go this far publicly and
then settle," said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the
University of South Carolina with expertise in autonomous vehicle law.
"What this does do, though, is it says to other attorneys, we might
settle. We might not always fight it. That is the signal."
The case follows two previous California trials over Autopilot that
Tesla won by arguing the drivers involved had not heeded its
instructions to maintain attention while using the system.
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The logo of Tesla on display at the Everything Electric exhibition
at the ExCeL London international exhibition and convention centre
in London, Britain, March 28, 2024. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra/File
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Tesla has yet to prove it can produce an autonomous car despite
years of predictions by co-founder and CEO Musk that one was just
around the corner, an expectation that partly underpinned Tesla's
soaring valuation.
Musk said on Friday that Tesla plans to unveil a self-driving
robotaxi on Aug. 8, after Reuters reported that Tesla scrapped an
inexpensive car plan in favor of robotaxis.
He also said last month that Tesla will offer U.S. customers a
month's free trial of its driver-assist technology, Full
Self-Driving.
Any negative publicity threatens to hurt the reputation of Tesla at
a time when the company is battling weakening sales and reputational
damage caused by certain controversial comments from Musk, said
Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid.
"The last thing they would want right now is to have a public trial
showing all of the problems with Full Self-Driving," he added.
Tesla says Autopilot can match speed to surrounding traffic and
navigate within a highway lane. The step-up "enhanced" Autopilot,
which costs $6,000, adds automated lane-changes, highway ramp
navigation and self-parking features. The $12,000 Full Self-Driving
option adds automated features for city streets, such as stop-light
recognition.
Tesla materials explaining the systems warn that it does not make
the car autonomous and requires a "fully attentive driver" who can
"take over at any moment."
Musk said in a social media post in 2022: "We will never
surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably
lose."
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Aditya Soni in
Bengaluru, additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco;
Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Lisa Shumaker, Leslie Adler and
Himani Sarkar)
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