NHTSA Investigating Another 'Autopilot' Crash as Tesla Comes Out Swinging at the Media

Tesla’s bad news week has now spilled over into a second, after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a second investigation into a Tesla crash involving the semi-autonomous Autopilot system.

According to Reuters, the agency wants to know if the Autopilot on the Model X involved in a July 1 rollover was activated at the time of the incident, and if it played any role in the crash. The driver of the Model X, a Detroit-area man who wasn’t seriously injured, claims he was using Autopilot when the vehicle left its lane and hit a guardrail on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

While the NHTSA looks into this crash and the fatal May 7 collision that took the life of a Tesla owner in Florida, the automaker is engaged in a nasty war of words with Fortune magazine over two articles it claims are misleading and false.

In a blog post titled “Misfortune”, Tesla slammed the publication for assuming the automaker knew all of the details of the May 7 crash when it completed its $2 billion stock offering to investors on May 18.

“Tesla and Musk did not disclose the very material fact that a man had died while using an auto-pilot technology that Tesla had marketed vigorously as safe and important to its customers,” the Fortune article stated.

Tesla fired back, claiming that it took some time to access the wrecked vehicle and determine whether Autopilot was engaged at the time of impact:

When Tesla told NHTSA about the accident on May 16th, we had barely started our investigation. Tesla informed NHTSA because it wanted to let NHTSA know about a death that had taken place in one of its vehicles. It was not until May 18th that a Tesla investigator was able to go to Florida to inspect the car and the crash site and pull the complete vehicle logs from the car, and it was not until the last week of May that Tesla was able to finish its review of those logs and complete its investigation

Another Fortune article pointed out discrepancies in CEO Elon Musk’s language concerning the potential risk associated with Autopilot, before and after the crash.

“Musk told Fortune via email that the deadly crash wasn’t ‘material’ information that Tesla investors needed to know,” Fortune stated in its follow-up article.

“After the article appeared on Tuesday, Musk called the article ‘BS’ in a tweet and said that the fact that Tesla’s shares rose on Friday following the accident’s disclosure showed that the accident wasn’t material. But back in early May, Tesla said exactly the opposite of what its founder is saying now in an SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing. The company warned investors that a fatal crash related to its autopilot feature, even a single incident, would be a material event to ‘our brand, business, prospects, and operating results.'”

Tesla responded by stating, “news of a statistical inevitability did not materially change any statements previously made about the Autopilot system, its capabilities, or net impact on roadway safety.”

Meanwhile, Fortune just released a statement saying it stands by its reporting. This is the second time in a month that Tesla, and its CEO, have taken journalists to task following incidents involving its vehicles.

A series of posts written by former TTAC editor Edward Neidermeyer on his Daily Kanban blog examined a report of an unusual suspension failure on a Model S and detailed the automaker’s unusual interaction with the owner. Tesla savaged the journalist in a blog post of its own, and raised the specter of an organized conspiracy against the company.

Tesla was heavily criticized after news of the May 7 crash broke, with many safety advocates claiming that the company put owners at risk by allowing beta testing (real-world consumer testing) of its continually updated Autopilot system. Before the crash, the vehicle’s autopilot system failed to recognize and react to the tractor trailer in its path due to sunlight reflecting off the truck’s side.

The automaker already acknowledged why the vehicle didn’t react, but in its latest post, Tesla defends the Autopilot system:

To be clear, this accident was the result of a semi-tractor trailer crossing both lanes of a divided highway in front of an oncoming car. Whether driven under manual or assisted mode, this presented a challenging and unexpected emergency braking scenario for the driver to respond to. In the moments leading up to the collision, there is no evidence to suggest that Autopilot was not operating as designed and as described to users: specifically, as a driver assistance system that maintains a vehicle’s position in lane and adjusts the vehicle’s speed to match surrounding traffic.