A Tesla logo on an S model is photographed inside a New York Tesla dealership.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted about the 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 investigating the crash now.
Local police said in several press interviews that apparently no one was behind the wheel of the 2019 Tesla Model S when it veered off the road, crashed into a tree and exploded in flames, according to its preliminary investigations .
Musk wrote in his tweet on Monday: “The data records recovered so far show that the autopilot was not enabled and this car did not buy FSD. In addition, the standard autopilot would require that the lane lines that this street be activated did not have”.
Tesla sells its automated driving systems under the brand names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, or FSD. It also launches a “beta” version of the FSD software to some customers who have the premium FSD option, which costs $ 10,000.
Tesla Autopilot and FSD are not capable of controlling electric vehicles in all normal driving circumstances and the company owner’s manuals warn drivers to use them only with “active supervision”.
Autopilot, which is now standard on Tesla vehicles, does not always perfectly identify lane markers, for example, it can confuse sealed cracks on the road or bike lanes with other lane markers.
Drivers can also misuse or abuse the system. A teenage driver recently demonstrated in a video of tricks he shared on social media that he could leave the driver’s seat with the Tesla autopilot system still in use.