Brown was killed after his Tesla EV crashed into a truck.
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In another blog post published late Thursday, Tesla stressed that no one has brought a product-liability claim against Tesla related to the Florida crash and offered a fiery defense of Autopilot.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike crash, first reported by the Detroit Free Press, left a well-known MI art dealer injured.
Tesla said it can’t yet confirm whether or not the vehicle in the latest crash was in autopilot mode, but it is more bad news for the automaker, which is trying to get the public and investors to buy into its plans for more hands-free driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday it was collecting information from the Palo Alto-based electric vehicle maker, the driver and law enforcement to determine whether the automated features were engaged in the Friday crash. His Tesla, running in Autopilot mode, apparently misread the white sides of a turning truck as the brightness of the sky and failed to brake.
The company said it has been unable to reach the driver.
Tesla said it did no wrong by waiting to disclose the fatal accident involving a auto with its semi-autonomous software from May.
“It is important to note that Tesla disables Autopilot by default and requires explicit acknowledgement that the system is new technology and still in a public beta phase before it can be enabled”, the company said in June after the NHSTA launched its first probe.
The NHTSA hasn’t said there is a formal defect investigation on the Tesla Autopilot feature, a step it takes when it believes there is evidence of a design flaw that could lead to a safety recall.
The Pennsylvania State Policeman who responded to the crash said he will likely cite Scaglione after the investigation surrounding the crash is complete.
Details have now emerged of Autopilot 2.0, an update to the current version of Autopilot in Tesla cars that will hopefully address the severe limitations of Autopilot. But the company said more detailed information about the car’s operation was not received, a situation that could happen if the car’s antenna was damaged in the crash.
Scaglione and a passenger, his son-in-law, both survived the crash.
But it noted “given its nature as a driver-assistance system, a collision on Autopilot was a statistical inevitability, though by this point, not one that would alter the conclusion already borne out over millions of miles that the system provided a net safety benefit to society”.
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Scaglione was said to be driving his 2016 Tesla Model X, a vehicle introduced with great fanfare in September of a year ago by Tesla founder Elon Musk. “Motoring experts say it is that the technology in self-driving systems is improving all the time but to expect ‘defect-free” driving is unreasonable.
