The carmaker has said it will launch an investigation and that “o$3 nce the outcome is known, Tesla will share with the audience”, something it has done for other high-profile crashes.
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Ronald Boer, a spokesman for emergency services, says firefighters did not immediately recover the man’s body because of fears that emergency service workers could be electrocuted.
A Tesla Model S crash that killed a 53-year-old driver in the Netherlands wasn’t caused by the “Autopilot” feature, according to Tesla engineers who reviewed the electric car’s logs.
The Model S Autopilot also makes it possible for drivers to takes their hands off the steering wheel for minutes at a time, and for the auto to alert emergency responders that the user might be hurt or in danger. And reports of fatal Tesla vehicle crashes in the USA and overseas have pushed the stock lower after prompting questions about safety of the company’s self-driving technology. Tesla stepped in to explain the best procedure, and the body was finally removed from the wreck several hours after the accident.
A fatal accident involving a Tesla Model S occurred when a speeding driver hit a tree, with the company denying that the car’s Autopilot software was engaged at the time.
The Dutch vehicle regulator RDW is the authority which issues road worthiness certificates for Teslas in Europe. A spokeswoman said it was not known whether the vehicle was using “autopilot”, Tesla’s driving assistance technology, at the time of the crash, and that would form part of the investigation.
The automotive firm also confirm autopilot was not engaged, evident in the car’s logs, during the drivers entire journey.
Tesla is also probing an incident in France in August when a Model S sedan caught fire during a test drive in the southwestern town of Bayonne.
Tesla has cautioned that the system, introduced previous year, is not fully autonomous and drivers should be at the wheel and ready to take control. The system can also maintain a set speed and change lanes by itself.
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U.S. federal regulators also recorded two fires involving the Model S, one each in the USA states of Washington and Tennessee in 2013. Drivers must acknowledge, when they activate Autopilot, that the system is in beta-test and that they are responsible for the vehicle.
